Chinese psychiatric hospitals are a means to silence activists (NGO)

First modification: 08/17/2022 – 17:29

Once hospitalized in a psychiatric service, the person is isolated, beaten and subjected to painful electroshock therapy. She is also tied to the bed and humiliated by being left for hours in her own excrement.

“There are a little more than a hundred hospitals in 21 Chinese provinces that cooperate with the authorities. They have committed themselves to sending political militants to those hospital centers. Now, many doctors and nurses are forced by the police and local authorities.” Jing-Jie Chen, a researcher at Safeguard Defenders, an NGO based in Madrid, told RFI.

We asked Chen if the goal of China’s psychiatric hospital system, known as “Ankang,” is to “brainwash” victims.

“No, it’s not really a ‘brainwashing’ campaign. It’s more of a way to quickly silence a person. If the police arrest a person and send them to trial, they usually have to wait for the investigation. On the other hand, if the Chinese psychiatric hospital system, the Ankang, is used, it will be more difficult for the accused person to continue fighting for their rights and appeal to a judge. Their case goes to another type of procedure. It is estimated that the person is mentally ill and he needs help. To a certain extent, the authorities also use this as an argument to say: ‘look, this militant is mentally disturbed, what he says is insane.’ But the main objective of the Ankang system is, again, to silence the person “.

The Safeguard Defenders report is based on a hundred cases compiled over six years. Is it very difficult to collect testimonials?

“Yes, because many of the victims, after being hospitalized in those strict psychiatric centers, where they were drugged and beaten, present physical and psychological sequelae that prevent them from speaking. The Chinese authorities also force them to sign a document stating They promise not to return to the military. Many of them, after being tortured or beaten, refuse to speak,” says Jing-Jie Chen.

For decades, Chinese communist authorities have used the country’s psychiatric system, known as Ankang, to lock up political prisoners.

“In 2022, the Communist Party of China (CCP) still routinely locks political targets in psychiatric hospitals despite implementing legal changes to curb this barbaric practice more than a decade ago,” Safeguard Defenders also says in its report.

The NGO accuses the party of removing “activists from the justice system, without hope of seeing a lawyer or going to trial, diagnosing them with mental illness so that they are socially isolated even after they are released.”

The NGO also denounces that inmates suffer mental and physical abuse and that some prisoners report beatings, confinement and electroshock therapy..

with AFP