China's psychiatric treatment for ‘trouble-makers’
www.bbc.com
Student among dozens who challenged China’s authorities to have been sent to psychiatric units, BBC finds.

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When Zhang Junjie was 17 he decided to protest outside his university about rules made by China’s government. Within days he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital and treated for schizophrenia.

Junjie is one of dozens of people identified by the BBC who were hospitalised after protesting or complaining to the authorities.

Many people we spoke to were given anti-psychotic drugs, and in some cases electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), without their consent.

While there have been reports for decades that hospitalisation is used in China as a way of detaining dissenting citizens without involving the courts, a leading Chinese lawyer has told the BBC that the issue - which legislation sought to resolve - has recently seen a resurgence.

Junjie says he was restrained and beaten by hospital staff before being forced to take medication.

[…]

“The doctors told me I had a very serious mental disease… Then they tied me to a bed. The nurses and doctors repeatedly told me, because of my views on the party and the government, then I must be mentally ill. It was terrifying,” he told the BBC World Service. He was there for 12 days.

[…]

Just over a month after being discharged, Junjie was once again arrested. Defying a fireworks ban at Chinese New Year (a measure brought in to fight air pollution) he had made a video of himself setting them off. Someone uploaded it online and police managed to link it to Junjie.

[…]

He was accused of “picking quarrels and troublemaking” - a charge frequently used to silence criticism of the Chinese government. Junjie says he was forcibly hospitalised again for more than two months.

After being discharged, Junjie was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs. We have seen the prescription - it was for Aripiprazole, used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

“Taking the medicine made me feel like my brain was quite a mess,” he says, adding that police would come to his house to check he had taken it.

Fearing a third hospitalisation, Junjie decided to leave China. He told his parents he was returning to university to pack up his room - but, in fact, he fled to New Zealand.

He didn’t say goodbye to family or friends.

[…]

  • recreationalcatheter@lemm.eeEnglish
    103·
    2 months ago

    Inb4 .ml goons come to praise the “universal Healthcare” China has given its citizens between propagandized whataboutisms regarding ‘ThE wEsT’.

  • thelucky8@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    There is also a BBC documentary about it.

    Troublemakers: Drugged, Framed and Detained – (Alternative Invidious link, 49 min)

    This in-depth investigation reveals how the [Chinese] police found ways to […] to punish protestors without going through the criminal justice system. With almost no checks and balances, the number of people being illegally sent to psychiatric hospitals is said to be surging.

    Testimonies from three protestors, detained for months in secure psychiatric wards reveal how they were restrained, forcibly treated with psychoactive drugs and even subjected to electric shock therapy.

    Their crime? “Picking quarrels and troublemaking” - the catch all offence police use to sweep up anyone threatening disturb “social harmony”.

  • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
    21·
    2 months ago

    This was a classic USSR tactic after they realized sending everyone who got report to gulag was bad optics.

    This treatment was served for people the regime esp had distaste for. Horrible abuse within the system, zero recourse.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social
          4·
          2 months ago

          What country? That’s not identifiable I should think. Even then, would they care?

          The reality is random internet people aren’t going to believe an exceptional claim like that without proof. If you don’t feel safe providing it, then don’t, but you also can’t insist we must believe you without it.

          Is there any journalism you’re aware of on the topic?

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        42·
        2 months ago

        I don’t know if you being earnest or not but the reaction of people on here is sad.

        They can’t grasp the concept just because we have more civil liberties than China does not mean we don’t have any violations.

        In US, spouses would get another one committed out of spite based on lies. Cops can do it too.

        Until camera phones, “nobody” believed that police abuse and kill blacks for no reason. Now it is common knowledge.

        If you are in fact earnest, I apologize for people attacking you like this. It aint right when the system abuses you and it worse when other pedons act like it never happened.