Punitive Psychiatry Back Again?

Association for Human Rights Defense International (A HRDI) initiated foundation of the independent psychiatric commission of experts. The decision was grounded, according to human rights activists, by the facts of the repressive psychiatry towards Belarusian nationals.

When speaking to the journalists today, the vice-president of the AHRDI Mikalai Mekeka remarked: ‘For several years we have been collecting the facts of persecution of dissidents in our country, among those being such conventional tools used in the USSR and the Hitler’s Germany as the repressive psychiatry and political medicine. It was in early 2000s that our lawyer Andrei Dzemidovich investigated the persecution of the Smaliavichi inhabitant Volha Sitnikava, who was struggling against the militia and public prosecutor’s tyranny .The woman of a retirement age was twice sent for treatment to the psycho-neurological clinics ‘Navinki’. She was twice examined by the doctors and admitted healthy. Then she sued those who had tried to put her into the psycho-hospital and she won the case,’ Radio Artesia reports.

But as the human rights activists state, not all similar stories have got such a happy end. Sometimes it takes years for the person to prove his psychic health. Many sad facts of the kind were announced at the conference which declared the initiative of ‘foundation of the independent psychiatric commission of experts’. You may get acquainted with them at www.4humanrights.org .