Magazine of the INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION AGAINST PSYCHIATRIC ASSAULT No. 2 – September 2004

HOPES and BRICKS

By Igor Girich / Russia News from the East: A report from Russia

Since the days
of publishing first ZWANG we have a lot of events in Russia.
First one lets us to hope that positive changes are still possible.

“Rakevich vs. Russia”

-The
reason is following. In October, 2003, The European Court of Human
Rights has recommended Russia to change its laws on coercive
psychiatric treatment. The case “Rakevich vs. Russia” was won by Tamara
Rakevich, who was forcedly placed into a psychiatric institution.
Below there is a description of this by Russian newspaper “Gazeta” (in
shortened form; you can see the full text in English at http://www.psychiatrie-erfahrene.de/rakevich.htm).

Tamara Rakevich, who was forcedly kept in Ekaterinburg psychiatric
hospital without any sufficient grounds, will receive by a decision of
the Court an indemnification of 3,000 Euros.
The 42-years old inhabitant of Ekaterinburg, Tamara Rakevich, was
placed in Ekaterinburg psychiatric hospital No.26 on September 26,
1999. An occasion for the coercive treatment was given by her
acquaintance. As reported by Rakevich’s lawyer, Anna Demeneva, to
“Gazeta.Ru”, her client came to her acquaintance’s home to discuss some
religious questions.
A joint perusal of the Bible and a discussion of theological questions
ended with a conflict. The acquaintance of the victim, having noticed
that she cried during the perusal of the Bible, decided to call
psychiatrists. In addition, the religious beliefs of the victim, an
orthodox Christian, seemed strange to her acquaintance, who belongs to
the Jehovah church.
The psychiatrists who arrived on call ascertained that Tamara Rakevich
was in a “disturbing condition” and that, in their opinion, was the
sufficient basis for coercive treatment in a psychiatric hospital.
Tamara was kept in Ekaterinburg psychiatric hospital No.26 for 39 days
without a final decision by the court on the necessity of treatment. In
the hospital doctors found out that the patient was in a condition of
severe mental frustration and was completely disoriented. According to
the statement by the doctors, the patient refused to cooperate with
them.
On September 28 and 29, 1999, psychiatrists at the hospital determined
on their consultation that the patient suffered from “paranoid
schizophrenia” and prescribed a treatment corresponding to the
diagnosis.

Thus,
according to Rakevich’s lawyer, despite the unwillingness of her
client, she underwent the forced drug treatment. According to the
doctors reports, during the whole course of Rakevich’s “psychiatric
correction”, she behaved coldly and wrote complaints all the time.
On November 5, 1999 an Ekaterinburg regional court, at the request of
the psychiatrists, made a decision about the validity of Rakevich’s
detention for coercive psychiatric treatment. She wrote complaints, but
they, as usually, had no effect.
Demeneva insisted that the regional court acted illegally, unfairly
having delayed consideration of the case. So the decision of the court
was accepted in 39 days instead of only 5, as stipulated under the law.
The basis of all arguments that Rakevich’s actions represented a threat
to others was disproved by her lawyers.
Considering all the circumstances of Rakevich’s case, the Court in
Strasbourg has decided that the decision of the Russian court
contradicts Article 1, Paragraph 5 of the European Convention on Human
Rights, which states that “Everyone has the right to liberty and
security of person. No one shall be deprived of his liberty save in the
following cases and in accordance with a procedure prescribed by law”.
This procedure was not taken into account by the Ekaterinburg judges.
In addition the court has obliged the government of the Russian
Federation to pay 3,000 Euros in national currency to the claimant
within three months. In addition, it was offered to Russia to make
amendments to the legislation on the providing of psychiatric help.

Their “amendments”. Their “development”

At
the time when we wait for good changes, somebody is dreaming about
quite different perspective. I mean the discussion in the State Duma
(Russian Parliament) the programme entitled “Development of Psychiatric
Care in the Russian Federation”.
The psychiatric community instigated its adoption. We hear their usual
songs: “The number of mentally ill is dramatically increased, they are
dangerous people, we have not enough modern drugs…” This song in not
national – it is international: haven’t you hear it in your
“progressive” country?
Its aim, in short, to increase the number of mental “hospitals”
(existing 296 ones seems not enough for their appetites) and the sums
of money for those who are “caring”…
And they planned to make a lot of changes in the law “About psychiatric
help…” in the way that significantly decreases basic human rights,
simplifying the procedure of involuntary incarceration, legalizing
experiments on madhouses’ prisoners, etc. This project was proposed by
a group of Moscow psychiatrists, mainly from Serbsky’s Institute (The
Central Institute of Forensic Psychiatry).
We tried to counteract by sending e-letters to Duma’s deputes with an
appeal to stop the shrinks’ plans. But this way of communication is
almost totally under supervision… “State security” in Russia now
means, in particular, barring such undesired messages, so they
seemingly haven’t reacted. So we had to use the ordinary post service.
It’s more expensive way, but we hope at least some of the letters
reached their targets.
As a result, we saw a positive effect – Duma did not accept these
shrinks’ amendments and it did not accept this plan of “development of
psychiatric care…”. As it can be seen from the publications in
Russian newspaper “Izvestiya”, we were not alone who tried to affect
the situation – more likely, the efforts of other Human Right Groups
were more productive.
Thank God – Duma at least put off this program.

Principal difficulties

For last three years we have seen the psychiatry in a
difficult situation. Colonel Budanov, who was accused of murdering a
Chechen girl in spring, 2000, was sent off for a psychiatric
examination a lot of times. Experts of Serbsky Institute “determined”
if the colonel was temporarily insane at the time the crime was
committed. The sentence of the court depends on the decision of the
members of the “expert commission”.
So-called Independent Psychiatric Association was also involved in this
“competition of experts”. Because this case has principal meaning to
determine the state’s attitude to similar criminal cases in Chechnya,
the colonel has been hanging between “insane”, “temporarily insane”,
“healthy” and “temporarily healthy” for so long period. These different
“commissions of experts” reported their contradictory conclusions. This
case had great social resonance – some people believed Budanov was a
hero of this war. Finally, Budanov was imprisoned (not psychiatrically)
for 10 years.

A “dangerous” meeting was prevented

But still no good changes visible. Today we found an advocate
who is ready to defend a long-time psychiatric prisoner Igor Gubin, who
has been sentenced in a local “medical” institution for about year (and
this is not the first time). Shrinks were not too inventive in
protecting Igor from this “undesired” assistance – they simply refused
to get access an advocate to him.

A “gift”

On the contrary, they believed that “hospital’s” building has
too many windows to provide “therapeutic conditions”. At the end of
2003 they closed one window with bricks. The toilet, that always was a
place of meetings and discussions, a place from where one could gulp
some fresh air from outside, became a windowsless box. You could see
this window on the photo in previous ZWANG. Now it has the look showed
on this picture.

A decorative defender

Traditionally, courts and public prosecutors in Russia are
not effective in defending citizens oppressed by psychiatrists. State
power is trying to imitate its efforts in this field by introducing the
institute of “ombudsman” as an alternative state “defender”. But “ye
shall know them by their fruits…” (Matthew 7:16). Being created as an
analogous of Western ones, by now they have demonstrated the similarity
only in their titles. What I have said is based on our experience to
appeal to this Altai “ombudsman” – this was not more effective than an
appeal to the “doctors” to not inject you with their slops.

Not only human rights

Psychiatric
ideology penetrated into various spheres of society. I believe that
common conception of human rights is not sufficient if we want to live
without psychiatry – one right of one people could collide with another
right of another people, and this counteraction could be infinite. We
need another conceptions what would help us to set the priorities of
the rights in case of their collision. Today this regulative role
frequently transferred to judges, experts or simply to brute force. The
Holy Scripture contains the keys that usually are not in use by modern
“human rights society”. Why don’t we use it?

Igor Girich,
“Help for Victims of Psychiatrists”
http://hvp.by.ru
(I’d like to announce an English page on our web site:
http://hvp.by.ru/english.htm)

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