China Punishes Activists By Imprisoning Them In Psychiatric Hospitals

China's use of psychiatric hospitals to imprison activists without due process remains routine, a rights group said on Wednesday.

A report released by Madrid-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) Safeguard Defenders said the practice continues, despite reforms in the early 2010s that required medical assent and increased judicial oversight over China's psychiatric care system.

Chinese authorities for decades used the country's system of psychiatric hospitals, known as Ankang, to punish political prisoners.

The Daily Sabah added that the majority of the data in the report comes from interviews with victims and their families posted online by the Chinese NGO Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch (CRLW), an organisation founded by activist and journalist Liu Feiyue.

The data looks at the cases of 99 Chinese people forced into psychiatric hospitalization for political reasons between 2015 and 2021.

The group said; "In 2022, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is still routinely locking up political targets in psychiatric hospitals despite implementing legal changes to stop this barbaric practice more than a decade ago.

"The CCP is able to remove petitioners and activists entirely out of the justice system, with no hope of seeing a lawyer or going to trial, while diagnosing them with mental illness so that they are socially isolated even after release."

Detainees were often subject to physical and mental abuse, the report said, citing claims by prisoners that they had been subject to beatings, electroshock therapy and solitary confinement.

Among those detained was a young girl who had live-tweeted herself splashing paint on a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and also a man who had petitioned China for medical compensation for an injury sustained while serving in the army and longtime pro-democracy activist Song Zaimin.