This article revisits a 2011 report on forced psychiatric hospitalization in China. People who criticized the government or repeatedly petitioned authorities were labeled “abnormal” and confined in psychiatric hospitals, revealing the true nature of the Chinese Communist regime.

February 24, 2020
In China, such problems have surfaced one after another.
Criticism has been rising, including comments such as, “It is another means of silencing anti-government people” from a Beijing human-rights lawyer.
For certain reasons, I searched through the chapters I had previously published that contained the name Wuhan.
The first one that appeared was a chapter dated July 19, 2011.
Silencing Government Criticism.
Four Years of Petitioning.
Treated as Abnormal.
People who criticized the government, among others, were one day suddenly diagnosed as mentally ill, forcibly hospitalized, and not even allowed to meet their families.
In China, such problems have surfaced one after another.
Criticism has been rising, including comments such as, “It is another means of silencing anti-government people” from a Beijing human-rights lawyer.
On the street, he was suddenly struck from behind with a hard object.
Zhou Mingde, 53, who had been a factory worker in Shanghai, lost consciousness.
It was a hot day in April 2008.
When he came to, he was in an ambulance.
Both of his arms were tied.
He was taken to a psychiatric ward with iron bars on the doors.
Two months in a psychiatric ward.
He was given the blue striped clothes worn by inpatients and was told to take medication.
He realized that he had been forcibly hospitalized.
Since around 2005, Mr. Zhou had been claiming that there had been malpractice by a local medical institution in the treatment of his mother, who had fallen into a vegetative state.
The local government would not deal with him, and he had gone to Beijing more than 70 times.
On this occasion as well, he had gone to the Ministry of Health to petition, but he had been taken away by officials and sent back to Shanghai.
“I am normal.”
Mr. Zhou continued writing letters to doctors, asking to be discharged.
His relatives also sought his discharge, but they were not listened to.
After showing the nurses that he had swallowed the medicine, he vomited it out in the toilet.
“Why do they do such a cruel thing?”
Tears welled up in his eyes.
It was 66 days later that he was allowed to receive “out-of-hospital treatment.”
After being discharged, he filed a lawsuit with the court, but it was dismissed.
“If you complain to the government, does that mean you are ill? Petitioning is recognized by law. I will continue to appeal because I do not want any more people like me to be created,” Mr. Zhou said bitterly.
The hospital has refused to be interviewed.
However, a copy of the diagnosis submitted to the court stated the reason for his hospitalization as a “paranoid state” and then said the following.
“The act of repeatedly petitioning for four years is abnormal.”
Similar cases have occurred one after another in various places.
In April of this year, Xu Wu, 43, who had been an employee of a state-owned enterprise in Wuhan, Hubei Province, escaped from a psychiatric hospital.
Armed with a diagnosis from another hospital stating that he did not have a mental illness, he appealed to the local media.
In 2006, after repeatedly exposing corruption issues, Mr. Xu was forcibly hospitalized, and even visits from his parents were not permitted.
In early June, local authorities announced the results of an investigation stating that he was “indeed mentally ill,” while at the same time permitting his discharge.
Doctors cannot refuse.
Behind this lies the problem that China has no law concerning the forced hospitalization of psychiatric patients, and regulations differ from region to region.
For example, in the case of Shanghai, medical institutions can forcibly hospitalize a patient if the patient lacks awareness of his or her pathological condition.
In other words, if a person says, “There is nothing wrong with me,” that person can become a target for forced hospitalization.
There is also the reality that when the police authorities send a person inconvenient to them to a medical institution as “ill,” it is difficult for the doctors to refuse.
For this reason, Huang Xuetao, a lawyer in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, who works on the human rights issues of “patients,” says, “There must be a mechanism by which detained people can raise objections.”
In response to a series of incidents, the Ministry of Health released a draft in mid-June toward the legislation of a Mental Health Law.
The draft included the right to file lawsuits and complaints when a person is forcibly hospitalized.
However, there are many cool-headed views, such as that of the First Financial Daily: “It is an illusion to think that responsibility can be pursued without supervision over public power.”
(Beijing = Koichi Furuya)