The Chinese government should stop hospitals and other medical facilities from subjecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people to conversion therapy that in some cases has involved electroshock treatment, involuntary confinement and forced medication, a human rights group said yesterday.
The report released by New York-based Human Rights Watch, based on interviews with 17 people subjected to the widely criticized techniques since 2009, comes as awareness has grown in China regarding the rights of LGBT people.
Homosexuality was removed from China’s official list of mental illnesses more than 15 years ago, but stories of families enrolling their relatives in treatments seeking to change their sexual orientation remain common.
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The report says many victims of conversion therapy were forcibly brought to hospitals by their families, which became the subject of a groundbreaking lawsuit earlier this year.
Chinese society continues to strongly favor children who can pass on their family name, and since same-sex marriage is not legal and same-sex couples cannot jointly adopt children, LGBT people feel compelled to enter heterosexual marriages and have children.
China also has no laws protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, which deters victims of conversion therapy from seeking justice out of fear that their sexual orientation would be made public.
While the authorities no longer round up and prosecute homosexuals, the scope of public activism by LGBT rights groups is restricted, and the depiction of LGBT people on TV and Web streaming services is banned.
Despite that, activists say there has been progress on LGBT rights.
“In recent years, China has become increasingly liberal and open to LGBT people,” said Wang Long, an LGBT activist from Zhejiang Province.
Shanghai has hosted an annual gay pride parade since 2009.
In July, a gay man successfully sued a mental hospital over forced conversion therapy, in what activists hailed as the first such victory for the LGBT community.
The court in Zhumadian, Henan Province, ordered a hospital to publish an apology in local newspapers and pay the 38-year-old man 5,000 yuan (US$750) in compensation.
The man, surnamed Yu, had been forcibly confined to the institution in 2015 by his wife and relatives, and was diagnosed with “sexual preference disorder.”
He was forced to take medicine and receive injections until he was released 19 days later.
However, a single lawsuit is not enough to deter the practice of conversion therapy, Human Rights Watch and activists said.
The practice of conversion therapy persists because “many doctors are ignorant about homosexuality and just follow the mainstream opinion, which is that being gay is abnormal, a sickness that must be treated,” Wang said.
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