User:Asdfg12345/Psychiatric Abuses

attempt at final draft


 * add in words from teacher that cultivation insanity does not exist

Psychiatric Abuses
The Chinese government admits a sharp increase in instances of Falun Gong practitioners being detained in psychiatric facilities, attributing the causes to the alleged harmful effects of Falun Gong practice, at the same time maintaining that all remedial actions have been taken in accordance with the law. Falun Gong sources claim that there are illegal, systematic and widespread abuses of mentally healthy Falun Gong practitioners in psychiatric custody. Some independent writers seek to corroborate the claims of Falun Gong while others dismiss them. A noted writer on the alleged psychiatric abuses of the Chinese government is Robin Munro. Sunny Y. Lu and Viviana B. Galli write in the The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law that Munro “…first drew sustained, worldwide attention to the abuses of forensic psychiatry in China in general and of Falun Gong practitioners in particular.” Some third-party commentators, such as Sing Lee and Arthur Kleinman have expressed skepticism and criticism towards Munro’s reports. Lee and Kleinman suggest that Munro may be biased and his sources flawed, and that the profession of psychiatry in China is not severely compromised by the Chinese government alleged regime of repression, as Munro suggests. Munro responded to these criticisms in the same journal, saying "...nowhere in their critique of my allegations of political psychiatric abuse in China do Lee and Kleinman even attempt to make any substantive rebuttal of the principal evidence I present..."


 * need more information from CCP side.

With regard to allegations of psychiatric abuses of Falun Gong practitioners, the Chinese government has stated that the government’s actions against Falun Gong are carried out in accordance with Chinese law. The Chinese government refers to Falun Gong as a cult, and reports that “The cult has led to more than 650 cases of psychological disorder, with 11 practitioners becoming homicides and 144 others physically disabled.” Ji Shi in his book Li Hongzhi and his “Falun Gong”—Deceiving the Public and Ruining Lives, writes that “According to doctors at the Beijing University of Medical Science, since 1992 the number of patients with psychiatric disorders caused by practicing “Falun Gong” has increased markedly, accounting for 10.2 percent of all patients suffering from mental disorders caused by practicing various ‘’qigong’’ exercises. In the first half of this year the number rose further, accounting for 42.1 percent.”

A report from the Falun Dafa Information Center states that an estimated 1,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been forcefully detained in mental hospitals, with reports of psychological abuses, administration of sedatives or anti-psychotic drugs and torture by electrocution, force-feeding, beating or starvation. It is claimed that practitioners are admitted because they refuse to give up Falun Gong, “...went to the government to appeal for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong, or because they refused to defame Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, as the authorities demanded.”

In his article "Judicial Psychiatry in China and its Political Abuses" published in the Colombia Journal of Asian Law, Munro attempts to contextualize the alleges abuses of Falun Gong practitioners in a history of politicization of the psychiatric profession by the Chinese government since the 1950’s. He suggests that many outside observers find the Chinese government’s “…continuing campaign against the Falun Gong to be closely reminiscent of the kinds of extreme and unbridled political campaigns waged by the Party during the Cultural Revolution.” And that “Since the latter part of 1999… it has become abundantly clear that religious sectarians also now also form a major target of politically repressive psychiatry in China.” He later adds more specifically that “The most distinctive aspect of the government’s protracted campaign to crush the Falun Gong, aside from its sheer scope and brutality, has been the flood of reports… indicating that large numbers of the group’s detained practitioners were being forcibly sent to mental hospitals by the security authorities.”

Lu and Galli in their study entitled "Psychiatric Abuse of Falun Gong practitioners in China" give a similar portrayal of the alleged psychiatric abuses by the Chinese government:"Using mental hospitals as places of government-directed torture in China had been in a steady decline in the 1990s, but the government of Jiang Zemin resurrected this practice as part of a comprehensive and brutal campaign to “eradicate” Falun Gong. The political abuse of psychiatry by the Soviet Union was aimed at political dissenters and nonconformists, but Falun Gong practitioners are neither political nor nonconformists.”"

Munro describes some of the common abuses detained practitioners are reported to receive, such as being drugged with various unknown kinds of medication, kept in dark rooms for prolonged periods of time, subjected to electro-convulsive therapy or painful forms of electrical acupuncture treatment, denial of adequate food and water, restricted access to toilet facilities, and forced confessional statements renouncing belief in Falun Gong (as a condition of eventual release, followed by fines of several thousand yuan for their stay). Lu and Galli include in their list of alleged abuses: medications forcefully administered through nasogastric tubes as a form of torture or punishment, increases in medication dosages of up to five or six times, and physical torture including binding tightly with ropes in very painful positions. They also go on to describe some of the effects of this treatment, including the toxic effects of various drugs, chemicals or other unknown substances: loss of memory, migraines, extreme weakness, protrusion of the tongue, rigidity, loss of consciousness, vomiting, nausea and seizures. They write that medical staff are reported to deal with practitioners violently, reported comments including phrases such as “Aren’t you practicing Falun Gong? Let us see, which is stronger, Falun Gong or our medicines?”

Munro gives an account of the case of Tan Guihua, a 42 year old female from Shandong Province:

"On September 12, 1999, Tan went home after appealing in Beijing for the Falun Gong. Before she could sit down, some officers from her work unit and the Politics and Law Commission broke into her home and took her to the mental hospital."

"The officers dragged her into the mental hospital by force. By then, they had already prepared a big dose of injection and planned to give her the shot as soon as she arrived. Tan refused to take the injection. A tall nurse then went out and brought back eight mental patients. They pressed her down and gave her the injection. In only a few seconds, she began to feel faint and sick. Her heart started to beat extremely fast. She had to press her head against the wall and hold the ground firmly with both hands. While in great pain, she bit down tightly on the comforter in her mouth and tried not to make any noise. Her mouth bled from the biting. She then lost consciousness. She did not feel better until the effects of the drug gradually abated." Later, a female doctor asked Tan daily whether she would continue to practice Falun Gong. Tan said "yes," and the doctor then shocked her with electrical needles. She was shocked in this way altogether seven times. Meanwhile, she had been force-fed medicines and given injections three times a day. She spent two months in the hospital like this.

"Later, the female doctor asked a nurse named Ma to give her another kind of injection. It was said to be some kind of imported medicine, and the drug effect would last for over one month. After that injection, Tan's period stopped coming. Her eyeballs couldn't move and she became slow in reacting to things. A few days later, they added another medicine to the injection. After this shot, Tan shook all over violently and couldn't even hold the bowl. She was tortured like this for 20 days. When her family members finally picked her up, she was all muddleheaded and could not see things clearly. Her mind was totally blank and could not recall things for a long period. Her whole body was puffy. Her eyes looked dull. Her reactions became slow, and it took a long time for her to say a single word."

Lu and Galli write that not long after the crackdown began, government agents, police, and sometimes family members of practitioners began forcing mentally healthy Falun Gong practitioners into psychiatric facilities. With no formal legal procedures for commitment, local police officers and members of the 610 office have the power to arbitrarily commit Falun Gong practitioners to psychiatric institutions--while lengths of detention may range from days to years. Lu and Galli state that “The perversion of mental health facilities for the purpose of the torture of Falun Gong practitioners is widespread.” Lu and Galli claim that the targets come from all tiers of society, including physicians, nurses, judges, military personnel, police officers and school teachers, and that diagnoses range from obsessive-compulsive disorder, “mental problems induced by superstition”, “qigong-induced mental disorder”, or as Munro points out, the revised “hyperdiagnosis” of “evil cult-induced mental disorder” (xie-jiao suo zhi jingshen zhang’ai)--which he describes as a throwback to the model found in Soviet forensic psychiatry. Munro describes this as a “politically opportunistic new diagnosis,” with the Chinese government effectively issuing the “health warning”: “Spiritual or religious beliefs banned on political grounds can drive people mad.”

Lu and Galli write that in cases where hospitals know that the persons to be committed do not have any mental illness and therefore express reluctance to admit them, the government, through police pressure, often forces them to commit the practitioners. These involuntary commitments are because the individuals practice Falun Gong, pass out flyers against the government suppression, otherwise appeal to the government, refuse to renounce Falun Gong, or write petition letters. It is also claimed that the Chinese government uses extreme measures to prevent any investigation of the alleged psychiatric abuses. Lu and Galli cite: threats or bribes towards family members, summary cremation of victims' bodies, detainment of anyone else who knows the truth or will talk about it to western media, censorship of the internet, restricted access for western media, blocking attempts at investigations by international organizations such as Amnesty International, and detaining, harassing, deporting or revoking the licenses of journalists.

Other western psychiatrists have come to different conclusions with regard to the alleged psychiatric abuses, criticizing the work of Munro. Dr. Arthur Kleinman and Dr. Sing Lee from Harvard Medical School, long-time researchers on various psychiatric topics in China since 1978, both have had experience with patients suffering from “Qigong-induced mental disorder”. Partly in response to Munro’s suggestion that the term “qigong-induced mental disorder” may be in part a politicized, misused term to advance the Chinese government’s regime of suppression, they state that “In the scientific community, controlled phenomenologic, treatment, and outcome studies have been published in the past two decades that support the disease validity of qigong-related mental disorder…” And, go on to state that in international psychiatry this illness would be recognized as “…a specific type of brief reactive psychosis or as the precipitation of an underlying mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or posttraumatic stress disorder.”

Lee and Kleinman state that “…Falun Gong is one of many kinds of qigong that share certain similarities, such as the attainment of a trance state, patterned bodily posture or movement…”, the practice of which could induce mental illnesses in some of its practitioners. As part of Lee’s research in China in 1997 she reports interviewing a 54-year-old housewife who had practiced Falun Gong for two years. Before recounting the case directly, Lee narrates that “…the trance state and the spontaneous bodily movement that the practice brought about enthralled her.”—notwithstanding that the references to a “trance state” and “spontaneous bodily movement” are not consistent with the teachings of Falun Gong which state “…You cannot be in a trance or lose yourself when practicing…” and that “Your Main Consciousness should govern you at all times as you do the exercises.”

Despite this, Lee recounts that the patient started to find that her body moved in ways that were no longer under her control, and that: "“She thought that these movements “talked” to her, sometimes by writing through her hand, telling her that continuous practice of Falun Gong could transform her into a Buddha. That she was plump and had long earlobes, resembling the popular appearance of a Buddha, convinced her that this possibility was real. In due course, however, she was frightened because the movements began to tell her to die by not eating and by taking an overdose of pills. She believed she was possessed by a shapeless fox spirit a thousand years old that required her body to turn into a real Buddha. She became an insomniac, restless, and distressed. Her distraught family members took her to a psychiatric hospital where she initially resisted treatment because she did not think that she was mentally ill but was only having a paranormal experience… Subsequently, she stayed in the hospital for one month and gradually recovered with antipsychotic drug treatment. She accepted the advice of her doctor that she had a sensitive disposition that was not suited for practicing qigong and stopped the Falun Gong altogether. She knew of many middle-aged people who practiced and derived benefit from Falun Gong for health reasons and loneliness after retirement. But she also heard about some who died by self-induced starvation or suicide as they attempted to ascend to the Falun heaven.”"

In responding to Munro’s report, Lee and Kleinman state that “Much of his argument about the political abuse of psychiatry in China is based on unconfirmed allegations, many from human rights groups with their own axes to grind, and others from the Falun Gong religious cult, which, whatever we think of it, we must remember is engaged in a nasty political struggle with the Chinese state.” And that "Munro has based his essay entirely on indirect accounts and unconfirmed reports from sources that are clearly biased." They express their dissatisfaction that “We are not convinced by Munro’s argument that the Chinese government uses mental hospitals rather than the much cheaper regular prisons to detain Falun Gong practitioners because of the need for ‘self-justificatory vanity’ and ‘international prestige’” and also reject the assertion of both Munro and Lu & Galli that the modern Chinese psychiatric profession has become implicated in the Communist Party’s political agenda, citing personal anecdotes that “...during informal discussions regarding the Falun Gong, a number of Chinese psychiatrists whom we know of have expressed strongly the view that professional practice and politics should be separated, a phenomenon that was barely possible during the Maoist era.” They also caution Munro against “…creating a witch hunt that attributed to the profession as a whole the misuses and abuses of what may well turn out to be only a small number of practitioners.”

In his response to Lee and Kleinman, Munro responds to the claim that he “…based his essay entirely on indirect accounts and unconfirmed reports from sources that are clearly biased”, by saying:

“The overwhelming majority of the evidence I have publicly presented on this question to date consists of facts, commentary, and survey material written and compiled by Chinese psychiatrists and law-enforcement officers themselves, all of it published in China’s officially authorized professional literature over the past few decades. In what plausible sense can such material credibly be characterized as “indirect,” “unconfirmed,” and “clearly biased”? (Lee and Kleinman regularly cite this same scholarly psychiatric literature from China in their own published work.) Above all, nowhere in their critique of my allegations  of political psychiatric abuse in China do Lee and  Kleinman even attempt to make any substantive rebuttal  of the principal evidence I present—namely,  the copious documentation drawn from several decades  worth of the country’s own professional literature  on psychiatry and the law. On all this, they are disappointingly silent. Instead, they rhetorically conflate this formidable body of evidence with the small quantity of unconfirmed Falun Gong material and then misleadingly dismiss both as being “indirect, unconfirmed, and biased.” Because they have chosen not to address the principal evidence I presented, one must assume that they simply have no answer to it.”

He says that the four Falun Gong case notes were selected on the basis of their typicality “…from among several hundred such accounts that have so far been compiled and published by the Falun Gong’s human rights monitoring units.” And that “According to the latter’s extensive network of informants in China, already more than 300 Falun Gong detainees have died in police custody nationwide since July 1999, three of them in forced psychiatric detention and all reportedly as a direct consequence of police brutality… Independent investigations by foreign journalists based in Beijing… have confirmed the Falun Gong’s version of events in the cases that have been examined.”

Munro finishes his response to the question of the quality of the evidence he presented by saying that “…more fair-minded readers will conclude that the more than 100 pages of closely documented evidence of the systematic, decades-long political misuse of psychiatry by the Chinese authorities that directly preceded this short section on the Falun Gong cases… transfer the burden of proof squarely back onto the Chinese authorities, if they want to convince their own citizens and the outside world that the appalling accounts of extreme physical and psychological ill treatment supplied by detained Falun Gong practitioners since the crackdown began in mid-1999 are either false or substantially inaccurate.”