{"id":42337,"date":"2014-09-19T11:41:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T11:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=42337 "},"modified":"2014-09-19T11:41:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T11:41:00","slug":"42337-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=42337","title":{"rendered":"China Holds Blogger, Rights Activist in Psychiatric Hospitals"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>2014-09-18<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mzzg.org\/UploadCenter\/ArticlePics\/2014\/38\/2014919cb665a4f-4f7f-47d6-970d-daff6220f939.jpeg\" alt=\"2014919cb665a4f-4f7f-47d6-970d-daff6220f939.jpeg (622&#215;413)\" \/><br \/><div><\/div><div>A file photo of a patient at a psychiatric hospital in Fuzhou receiving a blood transfusion with bound feet.<\/div><div>&nbsp;AFP Photo<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>A Chinese blogger and a rights activist are being held in mental institutions, rights groups and activists say, sparking fears for their well-being.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Authorities in the southeastern province of Fujian detained outspoken blogger Shi Genyuan at his home on June 3 and forcibly committed him to the mental health ward of the Quanzhou No. 3 Hospital, according to the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch website.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Shi&#8217;s committal means that only Quanzhou state security police have the power to release him from the facility, although nurses there said he didn&#8217;t consent to his detention there.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>A campaign by Shi&#8217;s family and friends for his release has come to nothing in the face of threats from Quanzhou state security police, the group said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Shi is being held on the basis of a &#8220;psychiatric evaluation&#8221; carried out by police in August 2013, after he was held on suspicion of &#8220;incitement to subvert state power&#8221; the previous May, it said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;They are using mental illness as an excuse to detain him,&#8221; Shi&#8217;s friend, who gave only his surname Pan, told RFA.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>He said nobody believes that Shi is suffering from a genuine mental illness.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Mental health patients have normally lost at least some of their capacity to function in society,&#8221; Pan said. &#8220;But his notes say he wants to appeal.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Perhaps he wants to appeal against being labeled a mental health patient?&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8216;A form of reprisal&#8217;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Meanwhile, it has emerged that authorities in Beijing have been holding veteran pro-democracy activist Song Zaimin at the Pinggu Psychiatric Hospital, since he &#8220;disappeared&#8221; on Aug. 27, activists said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;We have received reliable information in the past couple of days saying that that [Song] is being held in a mental institution,&#8221; Beijing-based fellow activist Hou Xin told RFA.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;I am very worried about his situation. I never thought they would use a psychiatric hospital to detain him,&#8221; Hou said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>He said Song&#8217;s friends and family are getting together to campaign for his release.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;We want to see if we can get lawyers involved, because people don&#8217;t get released from psychiatric hospitals quickly,&#8221; he said.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>According to Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, Song was detained after taking part in activities marking the 25th anniversary of the military crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group, which collates and translates reports from a number of Chinese rights groups, said both Song&#8217;s and Shi&#8217;s detentions are illegal.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;Their detentions constitute a deprivation of liberty that directly violates China&#8217;s Mental Health Law, which went into effect in May 2013,&#8221; the group said in an e-mailed statement on Thursday.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/holds-09182014154334.html\">Continue reading the original article<\/a>.<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;Authorities in the southeastern province of Fujian detained outspoken blogger Shi Genyuan at his home on June 3 and forcibly committed him to the mental health ward of the Quanzhou No. 3 Hospital, according to the Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch website.&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}