Chinese mental hospitals have an euphemistic name: “Ankang”, which literally means “peace and health.” “Peace and Health” hospitals are psychiatric institutions, all of which are administered by China’s Ministry of Public Security, and rumor has it there are about 22 across the country (Lubman, 2016). Ankang hospitals are controlled by the police and used by the authorities to silence Chinese political dissidents and other human rights activists.
Lao Yeli, a promising 22-year-old college student in central China, recently was forced to be admitted into a mental hospital for his opinions published on the website that his university provided for students to write a microblog. In his blog, he expressed his support for a democratic republic, criticized Maoism and praised Taiwan’s democratic government. His bold action – wishing the mainland China to be a democratic country like Taiwan – was treated as a mentally unsound behavior. The hospital insisted that he take medications and injections, but he rejected. Fortunately, he was not forcefully medicated, but he was detained in the mental asylum and had no idea when he would be discharged.
In 2014, an outspoken blogger, Shi Genyuan, was forcibly committed to a “peace and health” hospital for “incitement to subvert the state power” in the southeastern province of Fujian. The local police performed a “psychiatric evaluation” on this blogger, and “diagnosed” him as suffering from a mental disorder. Shi’s family and friends launched a campaign for his release, but they were threatened to be thrown in jail by the state security police.
Song Zaimin, a veteran pro-democracy activist, disappeared after he participated in activities commemorating the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Later, his friends and family found him locked in a psychiatric hospital in Beijing. In an earlier case, a prominent Chinese dissident was confined in 1992 to an Ankang hospital after he was arrested by the police for demonstrating in Tiananmen Square against the June 4, 1989 crackdown on political activists. He was held there for over a decade (!!) until he was released in 2005.
The judicial system is all but nonexistent in China, because of the one-party ruling and lack of checks-and-balances. Various laws, such as the 2013 Mental Health Law, have been created by the Chinese government in the name of “protecting the people.” Yet, there is little change under these laws, especially when it comes to protect fundamental human rights. The root is the political system, which is above the law and is nothing but a harsh dictatorship. “To maintain stability” has always been the excuse for the government to systematically violate human rights, and the practice of psychiatric “treatment” for those the authorities regard as troublemakers has become a staple to China’s “stability maintenance” system.
As a consequence, many Chinese are the victims of unjust judgments by the local governments and then they spend all their savings and even risk their lives going to Beijing and appealing to the central government. Instead of receiving justice, they are harassed, mistreated, and even locked in mental asylums.
Henan-based petitioner Yue Lina has been committed to a mental institution four times for petitioning against the local government. “They tied me up and fed me drugs intravenously,” she told the China Rights Observer group. Reportedly, another petitioner Shen Zhihua, from the eastern province of Zhejiang, was detained on a petitioning trip to Beijing by “interceptors.” Shen was 51 years old and fought for her farmland which had been appropriated by officials in her hometown. The local authorities took away her farmland without her agreement, cut down all her white poplar trees, and leased it to others.
In the absence of legal procedures to detain an individual in a mental hospital, the Communist Party regime found the use of mental hospitals for persecution so convenient that it quickly began targeting a much wider population. Petitioners, human rights activists, dissidents, and Falun Gong practitioners all became victims. Between 1998 and 2010, more than 40,000 “patients” were “treated” at those mental hospitals. In 2010, the Ministry of Public Security decided that every province Public Security Bureau must have at least one “peace and health” hospital, which is a mental hospital run by the police at the provincial level.
For the Chinese government, psychiatric treatment for dissidents has become a strategy to kill two birds with one stone – avoiding the need for legal incarceration and destroying the victim’s reputation.
Ah…the beauty of free health care!
(Photo from the Epoch Times)