09/01/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-10102

PSYCHIATRIC ABUSE IN CHINA

At a meeting in Japan, the World Psychiatric Association voted to send a team to China to investigate charges of systematic psychiatric abuse of political prisoners. The vote came after the association examined evidence in a new report put out by Human Rights Watch and the Geneva Institute on Psychiatry.

The report was primarily based on official Chinese documents, including Chinese psychiatric textbooks and medical journals. It describes a system that reportedly condones the involuntary commitment to mental hospitals of political dissidents and nonconformists, including independent labor organizers, democracy advocates, and followers of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong.

The Human Rights Watch report is not the only testimony accusing China of psychiatric abuse of political dissenters. In its latest human rights report on China, the U.S. State Department stated, "There are many reports of persons, especially Falun Gong adherents, sentenced to mental hospitals for expressing their political or religious beliefs."

In 1991, the United Nations formulated a clear ethical code that forbids any diagnosis of mental illness to be made because of political or religious belief. The U-N guidelines also explicitly forbid dispensing medicine as a form of punishment.

Freedom of thought, freedom of belief, and freedom of expression are not diseases, but fundamental human rights that must be respected.