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.

Before

—

After

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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