China 'detaining opponents in mental homes'

The report alleges a secretive network of 20 police-run hospitals

By Duncan Hewitt in Shanghai

A leading human rights researcher has published what he says is evidence that China is using psychiatric hospitals to detain people seen as opponents of the government.

Robin Munro, a former China researcher of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, says that while China was never seen as practising such policies on the same scale as the former Soviet Union, there is evidence that it did follow the Soviet model.

Writing in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law, he says the government's battle with the banned Falun Gong movement seems to have reversed a decline in such abuses.

China has consistently denied such allegations.

Psychiatric drugs used

The study says there is substantial documentary evidence of a longstanding misuse of psychiatry for politically repressive purposes in China.

Some activists were allegedly force-fed psychiatric drugs, the report alleges

Researcher Robin Munro says such cases had decreased significantly by the early 1990s, after peaking during the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

But he details continuing isolated instances of abuses involving individuals who have challenged the authorities.

These include a man who unveiled a pro-democracy banner in Tiananmen Square and several labour activists allegedly force-fed psychiatric drugs.

And he says China's campaign against the Falun Gong spiritual movement over the past 18 months has seen a substantial resurgence of abusive practices.

He quotes unconfirmed estimates that around 600 Falun Gong practitioners have been sent to mental institutions, and three of them have died.

Mental institutions

State media have increasingly depicted Falungong followers as mentally imbalanced - particularly since the recent self-immolations in Tiananmen Square of five people the government says were Falun Gong practitioners.

China has arrested thousands of Falun Gong members

The study says there is no clear evidence that China's psychiatric profession as a whole is involved in the abuses.

It says it is likely that these are confined mainly to the small and secretive field of forensic psychiatry, which is closely linked to the police.

The report says people involved in political activity are among those most at risk of being sent to mental institutions.

One senior Chinese psychiatrist, however, suggested that the issue should not be blown out of proportion.

He told the New York Times that China's most pressing problem is its shortage of treatment for people who are genuinely mentally ill.

Official Chinese media reported recently that the country has little more than 3,000 psychiatric doctors for its population of over 1.2 billion.

Nevertheless, the head of Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, an international doctors coalition, has already said after reading the new report that he will seek to have China suspended from the World Psychological Association.