The incarceration of dissidents in psychiatric hospitals without any legal procedure remains a common practice in China, said Tuesday a human rights group, which accuses the Chinese health system of collusion with the authorities.
For decades, authorities in Beijing have used the country’s mental hospital system, known as “Ankang,” to crack down on political prisoners.
In a report released on Tuesday, the Madrid-based NGO Safeguard Defenders says the practice continues, despite reforms in the early 2010s that tightened court control over China’s psychiatric system.
Much of the data in the report comes from interviews with victims and their families posted online by the Chinese NGO Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch (CRLW), founded by activist and citizen journalist Liu Feiyue.
The data covers the cases of 99 Chinese people subjected to psychiatric hospitalization for political reasons between 2015 and 2021.
“In 2022, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to routinely lock up political targets in psychiatric hospitals, even as legal changes were implemented to end this barbaric practice more than a decade ago” , denounced the NGO.
“The CCP is able to shield petition signers and activists from the justice system, robbing them of the hope of seeing a lawyer or facing trial while diagnosing them with a mental illness that socially isolates them even after release,” adds the report.
According to the document, “doctors and hospitals are colluding with the CCP to subject victims to involuntary and medically unnecessary hospitalizations and forced medications.”
Also according to the report, most of the victims were petitioners, “people who are often at the bottom of the social ladder in China” and are therefore “easy targets”.
Electric shock and isolation
“Such numbers indicate that the sending of political prisoners to psychiatric wards is widespread and routine in China,” the report continues.
The document cites prisoners who claim to have been beaten, subjected to electric shocks and placed in solitary confinement.
Among those detained are a young woman who, live on Twitter, splashed paint on a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping; a man who asked Beijing for medical compensation for an injury he suffered while in the military; as well as Song Zaimin, a longtime pro-democracy activist, the NGO says.
Contacted by AFP, the Chinese Ministry of Health did not provide any response.
NGOs say the crackdown on political dissidents in China has intensified under President Xi Jinping, the country’s most powerful leader in decades.
Along with dissidents and protesters, rights groups say at least a million people, mostly members of Muslim minorities, have been incarcerated in “re-education camps” in the western region of Xinjiang.
China says it runs vocational training centers in the region to counter extremism.