China is under pressure to open its mental asylums to foreign scrutiny as the world's psychiatry body responds to allegations that they contain thousands of political dissidents locked up as mental patients.
A week-long congress of the World Psychiatric Association began yesterday in Yokohama, with focus on a study that concluded abuse of psychiatry in China is rampant.
A WPA general assembly vote is expected on Monday on whether to adopt a motion demanding that Beijing open the asylum doors to an independent investigation of prisoners' mental health.
If Beijing refuses, it could lead to eventual expulsion from the organization.
The last time a major member was forced out was in the 1980s when the Soviet Union withdrew under intense pressure.
With the Communist government keen to avoid international censure as it prepares to host the Olympics in 2008, human-rights activists say it is unlikely to risk a serious breakdown of relations with the WPA.
WPA President Juan Lopez-Ibor said yesterday that China had already agreed to let investigators in to work with its national psychiatry society and was showing every sign of cooperating.
"I spoke with the deputy minister of health in order to ensure that the Chinese Society of Psychiatry's activities with the WPA will not be prevented," he told a news conference.
But Robin Munro, a China specialist who authored the critical study published by US-based Human Rights Watch and the Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, said the Chinese Health Ministry had only agreed to an "educational" visit by the WPA.
"I suspect that the Chinese side are under a lot of pressure internationally so, rather than just denying everything, they're at least making a show of cooperating with the WPA," Munro said yesterday.
"I'm not sure that's going to be substantive cooperation, but let's wait and see."
In his report, Munro said China was using psychiatry to have political opponents declared insane -- a practice he likened to what had happened in the old Soviet Union. He said the situation had worsened since Beijing began a crackdown on the Falun Gong movement.
Munro said a surge in cases involving Falun Gong followers was clear evidence that police and forensic psychiatrists were working together to enforce the suppression of dissidents.
China has driven Falun Gong followers deep underground, using its security and military apparatus to smash what it labelled an "evil cult" and banned in 1999.
Citing numerous official documents, the report said that up to 15 percent of people held in Chinese mental institutions may be political prisoners, including labor activists and individuals who complain about political persecution.
The evidence showed "a long-standing record of the misuse of psychiatry for politically repressive purposes, one that resembles in all key respects that of the former Soviet Union."
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