Thursday, March 1, 2012

More Than 150 Hospitals in China Conducting Psychiatric Torture

(Clearwisdom.net) Since ancient times, the mission of hospitals is saving lives and curing the sick, which is not unlike the bounden duty of practitioners. However, under the control of Chinese Communist Party (CCP), medical ethics have been dismissed and many medical practitioners have become indifferent, devoid of personality, and with no regard for human life. The CCP even orders the medical practitioners to torture dissidents who are perfectly healthy by administering neurotoxic drugs.

The Falun Gong Human Rights Group headquartered in California, USA released a report entitled “CHINA: Systematic Psychiatric Torture of Falun Gong Practitioners in Hospitals.” The report listed individual cases of the CCP regime torturing Falun Gong practitioners with toxic psychiatric drugs to force them to renounce their beliefs. The report listed more than 150 hospitals in China involved in conducting psychiatric torture, and exposed again the large-scale inhumane human rights violations occurring in China.

The report by the Falun Gong Human Rights Group pointed out, “One of the most inhuman and notorious torture methods used in China in the attempt to eradicate Falun Gong practitioners is psychiatric torture. This form of torture is used routinely by staff of detention centers, labor camps, and jails to coerce Falun Gong practitioners to give up their beliefs. These horrifying acts are also regularly occurring in modern, reputable hospitals, by or overseen by, professional and skilled staffs who are trained to heal—not to hurt.”

The report collected 1,989 cases of Falun Gong practitioners who received psychiatric torture in China. These cases were reported on the Clearwisdom.net website. Because the CCP blocks information, the cases that Clearwisdom reported are just a tip of the iceberg. The overall outcome of psychiatric torture often leaves victims in an irreparable mental and physical state, and as noted, it may even lead to death. Once a person is mentally and physically destroyed, they are sent home to be cared for by family. They are reduced to a semi-comatose, “zombie,” lifeless state, often unable to walk, talk, or care for themselves. Some are reduced to insanity. They may also suffer from a variety of other health problems that they did not have before being tortured.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, hundreds of stories surfaced about psychiatric torture on mentally healthy individuals held against their will in mental hospitals under the former Soviet Union’s communist authority. As the evidence mounted through the media, in autobiographies, and by debates among psychiatrists and physicians, so did global outrage against it, particularly from the psychiatric and mental healthcare fields. Currently, under CCP control, the psychiatric torture is used more extensively in China. A spokesperson for the Falun Gong Human Rights Group said, “Such evidence is generally dismissed. In fact, in the past few years, 80 percent of those persecution reports of Falun Gong practitioners included some form of mental torture. To force Falun Gong practitioners to give up their belief, the CCP uses mental torture extensively, including but not limited to a combination of being forced to ingest or be injected with massive amounts of psychiatric drugs, unknown drugs, or toxic substances; undergoing a massive number of electroshock procedures (also known as electro-convulsive shock); or the use of electric needles at the temples to shock the brain and produce seizures.”

Such shocking torture is still occurring in China every day. We call on professional associations, agencies and organizations in the health fields, human rights organizations, world governments, and concerned citizens or organizations to take action to stop the CCP’s persecution and adopt global sanctions against these hospitals.

Report by Falun Gong Human Rights Group: http://www.falunhr.org/reports/PDFs/PsychiatricTortureOfFalunGongPractitionersInHospitals.pdf


List of more than 150 hospitals conducting psychiatric torture: http://www.falunhr.org/reports/PDFs/MentalHospitalReport-FalunHRNOV30-2011.pdf