Chinese turning to mental wards to break activists

Chinese turning to mental wards to break activists
"The police know that to arbitrarily detain someone is illegal,"
but mental wards are a different story

By SHARON LaFRANIERE and DAN LEVIN
The New York Times
updated 11/12/2010 6:11:02 AM ET




Xu Lindong’s confinement in a locked mental ward was all the more notable, his brother says,
for one extraordinary fact: he was not the least bit deranged. Angered by a dispute over land,
he had merely filed a series of complaints against the local government.
The government’s response was to draw up an order to commit him to a mental hospital —
and then to forge his brother’s name on the signature line.


Mr. Xu’s ordeal exemplifies far broader problems in China’s psychiatric system:
a gaping lack of legal protections against psychiatric abuses, shaky standards of medical ethics
and poorly trained psychiatrists and hospital administrators who sometimes feel obliged
to accept anyone — sane or not — who is escorted by a government official.

No one knows how often cases like Mr. Xu’s occur. But human rights activists say
confinements in mental hospitals appear to be on the rise because the local authorities
are under intense pressure to nip social unrest in the bud, but at the same time are
less free than they once were to jail people they consider troublemakers.


Liu Feiyue, the founder of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, a Chinese human-rights organization,
said his group had compiled a database of more than 200 Chinese citizens who were
wrongly committed to mental hospitals in the past decade after they filed grievances —
called petitions in China — against the government.



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how long before we are there?

KK wrote:

how long before we are there?

yep....the DSM keeps getting bigger...they're working on #5 as we post

there's a mental illness for everyone !!!