I just listened to a segment on NPR a few hours ago about Wang Wanxing, a Chinese political activist. Forcibly detained in a Chinese mental institution for 13 years, Mr. Wanxing was recently released and examined by European Forensic Psychiatrists who deemed him mentally sound and falsely hospitalized. I have written several diaries about my own forcible detention and hospitalization by the FBI in Atlanta, Georgia. As disturbing and wounding as that experience was, my ordeal wasn’t as torturous as that of Mr. Wanxing.
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Mark Magnier of the Los Angeles Times reported Mr. Wanxing’s ordeal back in November:
The unexpected August release and exile of political prisoner Wang Wanxing after 13 years in an asylum has shone a rare light on the communist regime’s use of psychiatry as a tool of repression.
In an extended telephone interview from Frankfurt, Germany, last week, the 56-year-old Wang said he saw a political prisoner die after being force-fed while on a hunger strike.
The facility in Beijing where he was treated also made frequent use of electrified acupuncture needles, he said, alternating between high and low dosages to keep patients off balance, and fed them powerful drugs that blunted their will to resist. Wang said he developed a technique for hiding the pills in his mouth and would spit them out afterward to avoid drowsiness and other side effects.
“Of course, I don’t consider myself crazy,” Wang said. “I don’t think they should put people in mental hospitals for political reasons. I think they did it to me because they didn’t want to send me to court, which would have brought a lot of international attention.”
Wang was picked up on the eve of the third anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown for unfurling a banner in the square that criticized the Communist Party and called on Beijing to reevaluate the event. “I’ve never regretted what I did in 1992,” he said. “If time were turned back, I’d do it again.” The Los Angeles Times, Home Ed., November 9, 2005, http://www.latimes.com/
This brought back memories of my own forcible medication and sedation at Peachford Behavioral Hospital, in Sandy Springs, Georgia. Often, the medication nurse would order me to open wide to ensure I wasn’t saving and hoarding pills for a suicide attempt. At that point in my hospitalization, too many people new I had been forcibly hospitalized. One doctor was very sympathetic and tried to alert the press. If I had killed myself, the FBI would have a mess on their hands. ( I have intentionally omitted the name of the doctor because I have written him and several other staff members letters, with hope they will be emboldened to come forward in the near future.)
The reference in the article to Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989 jarred my memory as well. I remember exactly where I was; in Los Angeles, getting ready to go to Disneyland for the first time with my sister. A very young woman then, I was just beginning to develop a political conscious. I was very upset and incredulous that somewhere in the world, young people, the same age as me were being slaughtered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989). However, this outrage was rapidly quelled by the glitz of The Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios and Beverly Hills. Never would I imagine that I to would one day experience a form of oppression at the hands of my government, the “greatest democracy” in the world.
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Magnier continues:
According to records given to Germany when Wang was released, his diagnosis was paranoia. The documents indicate that he was sedated with Thorazine, an antipsychotic drug… China has three broad categories of mental hospitals. Most are administered by the Health Ministry… The most controversial, however, are the asylums built to incarcerate and treat mentally ill offenders. These facilities, …are run by the Public Security Bureau. All the doctors and nurses are bureau officials. There are …facilities nationwide, and there are plans to build one in every Chinese city whose population exceeds 1 million…
New York-based Human Rights Watch has documented 3,000 cases of psychiatric punishment for political prisoners in China since the early 1980s. The Los Angeles Times, Home Ed., November 9, 2005,http://www.latimes.com/.
Did you pick up on the reference; “plans to build one in every…city whose population exceeds 1 million?” Just a few days ago, news was all over the blogosphere about Haliburton’s construction of detention centers in the U.S. If this is completed, look for big pharma to setup dispensaries in these centers for the purpose of forcibly medicating and thus subduing detainees (http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=de9dd9fbbbbd59388d802c3f4e0e1288). .
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Magnier continues:
Wang said many of the doctors and nurses were very nice to him, and without their kindness he would not have survived. But there were also sadists among them, he added, typically poorly educated nurses from rural areas. “Some enjoyed giving electrical shock therapy,” he said. “And they would require the other patients to watch.”
He recalled a patient named Huang Youliang who had registered repeated complaints of injustice against the government that landed him in the o7ankang f7several times.
Huang went on a hunger strike, Wang said, prompting the nurses to force-feed him. Normally this was done by inserting a tube through the patient’s nose and into the stomach.
But instead, he said, five people pinned Huang down and blocked his nose, forcing him to open his mouth, at which point they poured soup down his throat. He suffocated.
Wang attributes many of the abuses he reportedly witnessed to a system that lifted many checks on police power after Tiananmen in its zeal to impose order. Virtually all nations have criminal asylums to handle people such as John Hinckley Jr., who tried to assassinate President Reagan. But the police presence is usually limited to guarding the facility, not running it.
Using mental hospitals to house political detainees offers the regime several advantages, said Robin Monro, a human rights activist who wrote his doctoral dissertation on psychiatric abuse in China. It avoids the need for evidence that would be required in court, and it allows for a virtually unlimited sentence.
“It’s very convenient for them,” Monro said. “You have no rights because you’re deemed mentally ill. People just disappear into the system.” The Los Angeles Times, Home Ed., November 9, 2005,http://www.latimes.com/.
No commentary required with this last excerpt, it’s pretty self-explanatory. I ask you all to visualize this:
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According to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the U.S. has committed serious war crimes both here and abroad in the name of “terrorism prevention.”
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
Now, I know my experience at Peachford Hospital pales in comparison to what is going on in China, Iraq and in U.S. prisons. However, what I experienced was still a gross violation of my human rights! The U.S. government has been gradually increasing the level of human rights violations in this country for years, in an effort to see what they can get away with. As I mentioned in my diary, an intelligent young woman, Darlene Early, who is a paralegal, was forcibly detained and committed by police in Albany, NY for posting a sign of protest.
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http://www.legalhelp.org/public/article.php#TOP
http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/102505DMVProtestor.html
You can read a true account of my ordeal at:
http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/03/1806390.php
I’m asking you to please light up the phones at Peachford Hospital (770-455-3200) and ask that the doctors and staff who are aware of the forcible hospitalization of Deborah Lloyd, under the direction of the FBI, to please come forward, for the sake of human rights and justice! I’m also asking you to please light up the phones at Congressman John Lewis’ office (202-225-3801 and 404-659-0116) and voice your concern over the illegal and forcible hospitalization of a citizen in Fulton county. This isn’t even about me anymore, this is about preserving what few rights we have left and fighting back to restore our democracy!
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Deborah
deb98126@yahoo.com
