Dear colleagues:

We would like to share our thoughts with you before the WPA's crucial international gathering in Yokohama, Japan about a subject of great urgency:

The Link Between Propaganda Attacking Falun Gong* and the Abuse of Psychiatry in China

"Blaming the victim" may be one of the more destructive forms of behavior we encounter in our practice. It is certainly one of the most unfair. As psychiatrists we can understand the temptations to such behavior, even as we work to try to help others find more productive ways of dealing with life's challenges. For victimizers, blaming the victim is a strategy that has clear benefits. It shifts responsibility away from the abuser and may even be used to justify the abuse itself. Thus, we have all heard the rationale that abusive behavior "was for their own good." Unless the assumptions behind this behavior are challenged and exposed, the strategy of blaming the victim can help perpetuate abuse, gaining the tacit approval or even the cooperation of others not directly involved.

Beginning on July 20, 1999, Jiang Zemin, the President of the People's Republic of China, began a massive campaign of abuse in an attempt to "eradicate" the peaceful meditation practice of Falun Gong. Incredibly, but perhaps predictably, the propagandists who work for Jiang have made a central feature of their propaganda the claim that what the government is doing is "for the good of" the practitioners of Falun Gong. These practitioners are said to be psychotic, homicidal, and suicidal, and the government's campaign is therefore said to be necessary as a massive public health measure.

In order for our colleagues in the WPA to better understand the true foundation of the ongoing psychiatric abuse of the Falun Gong practitioners in China, we will in this letter examine cases that reveal the basis for the propaganda claims of the government regarding Falun Gong and mental health. Consideration of these cases shows that the government's propaganda campaign includes the participation of China's psychiatrists as an indispensable element. At the root of this connection lies the logic of the totalitarian state. This logic has perverted psychiatry in China and introduced into the ranks of a profession, whose sole concern should be the relief of suffering, the practice of torture. Understanding the true root of the psychiatric abuse in China helps one understand better how to approach the urgent task of reform.

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"Self Immolation" as hate campaign --the pivotal event that led to escalation of the persecution

The most notorious case advanced by the government of China to prove the mental illness of Falun Gong practitioners is the so-called "self-immolation," in which five or seven individuals identified by the government as practitioners are said to have set fire to themselves in Tiananmen Square. This incident took place on January 23, 2001. Within the hermetically sealed media environment of China itself, the film of this incident, which was replayed several times daily on television for months after the event, had an undeniable effect on public opinion, initially helping to cause a skeptical public to accept the government's claims regarding the pernicious character of Falun Gong.

Outside of China, where reporters can look independently at the facts, the government's version of this incident was almost immediately called into question. The CNN reporters who happened to be on the scene at the time raised the first questions. The government claims that the footage it has of the immolation came from CNN. But the CNN employees insist that police immediately confiscated their film within moments after the incident began. Their story is corroborated by the film itself, some of which was shot from angles above the square, angles that are not available to any western camera crew. The rest of it features close ups, but the wide angle shots from above do not show the CNN crew filming these close-ups, while they do show someone who is working in concert with the police on the square doing the filming. The government, by the way, almost immediately expelled the CNN camera crew from China.

The CNN camera crew also revealed that they only saw five figures involved in the incident, with no child on the scene, while the government claims there were seven people who set themselves on fire, one of whom was a child, Liu Siying.

Phillip Pan, writing on February 6 in the Washington Post, revealed that the neighbors of Liu Chunling, the woman who died in this incident and the mother of Liu Siying, had never seen or heard of her practicing Falun Gong. What they did know was that she worked as a cocktail waitress and beat her mother and her child -- all behaviors very uncharacteristic of Falun Gong practitioners.

A February 14 report in National Review revealed its conclusion neatly in its title: "Beijing is Burning -- More Lies from the PRC." A February 7 New York Times article revealed that some Chinese were already becoming increasingly skeptical of the government's account.

In fact, a close examination of the government's own video reveals a long list of details that suggest that this incident was a staged event. Most of us are initially unwilling to accept such a conclusion, because the implications of staging such an event are too horrible to consider. However, the analysis of the government's video that calls into question the government's account has now been widely circulated by Falun Gong practitioners inside China itself, and the almost universal reaction among the Chinese people has been that the government has lied to them about the immolation, and if it has lied to them about that, it has lied to them about Falun Gong. You may see this video for yourself at: http://www.faluninfo.net/devstories/tiananmen/immolation.asp

The "self-immolation" case is the most spectacular case advanced by the government to show that Falun Gong practitioners are subject to suicide and other disturbed behavior. Typical of the self-immolation case and the other cases advanced by the government is that the government has not allowed any third party investigation, and none of the people the government claims took part in the incident has been shown independently to have been a Falun Gong practitioner.

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Another strategy used in this hate campaign has been the use of psychiatric patients who allegedly have murdered or committed suicide

In order to discredit Falun Gong, the government regularly takes actual cases of suicide, homicide, or psychotic behavior, and then after the fact attributes these incidents to the practice of Falun Gong.

• The suicide of Li Youlin is a typical example. Here is an eyewitness account of how the police handled his case.

• The homicide case of Fu Yibin was also used in the hate campaign. In November 2001 Fu Yibin killed his wife and father, and severely injured his mother, during a psychotic episode. According to his relatives, prior to this breakdown, Fu Yibin had an eight-year long history of psychotic episodes, some of which included violent outbursts. There was no evidence that he had ever been a Falun Gong practitioner as the government propaganda claims. No forensic psychiatric exam of Fu Yibin was performed, and no third party investigation was allowed.

• Consider the case of Zhi-wen Zhang. In the November 28, 1999 issue of the Xi-an Worker newspaper published a "Special Report" which claimed that a woman named Zhi-wen Zhang had burned her daughter to death, and then killed herself, all because of Falun Gong. Voice of America reported on an independent investigation carried out by the Hong Kong Center for Human Rights and Democracy (in spite of the government's ban on such investigations). That investigation found that "the people, location, time, and story in that report were all fabricated... There did not exist a lady named Zhi-wen Zhang at all."

Qigong-induced psychosis is a culture-bound disorder that was formally included in the Chinese Classification of Mental Diseases (CCMD-II) in 1989 and has been utilized to frame Falun Gong. Practitioners have been involuntarily admitted to mental hospitals and then labeled as having qigong-induced mental disorder when the real reason of the admission was to persecute people who practice Falun Gong.

• Ms. Qi Bingshu, a 60-year-old well-known painter, was involuntarily admitted to Daliushu Mental Hospital in Dabeiyao Town for appealing to the authorities for Falun Gong. She was detained for over a year in the mental hospital, given forced intravenous injections and labeled as suffering "Qigong mental disorder." Prior to being admitted to the hospital she was mentally healthy, and looked like a 40-year-old woman, but soon after the torture started she lost her hair and had a constant tremor. She could not paint anymore.

Falun Gong is also blamed for pre-existing psychiatric conditions

There have been a few cases of individuals who had been mentally ill prior to practicing Falun Gong, and then the propagandists seize upon their continuing mental illness as evidence of the destructive effects of Falun Gong itself. Robin Munro, in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law (June 2002) reports a case of a young male worker and Falun Gong practitioner who appeared to have a mental illness. This individual had been known to have mental illness since 1992. In 1997, his family, hearing that Falun Gong could cure illnesses, urged him to begin practicing. In cases such as this young worker, the government victimizes them even more by subjecting them to television and radio interviews, and coverage in newspaper articles.

But of course, these cases, which involve pre-existing conditions, do not establish the government's claim of a causal relationship between Falun Gong and mental illness. Blaming Falun Gong for such a pre-existing condition is doubly unfair because the texts of Falun Gong explicitly forbid anyone with a mental illness from practicing it. Moreover, the non-violence of Falun Gong practitioners should now be beyond doubt, and this non-violence is firmly rooted in principle: the teachings of Falun Gong prohibit any violence, not to mention any killing, whether suicide or homicide.

The facts as we know them stand in sharp contrast to the claims made by the Chinese government. Prior to the persecution of Falun Gong, there had been no reports inside China of Falun Gong causing mental illness, even though the numbers of practitioners in China had grown to between 70 and 100 million by 1999. Massive surveys of tens of thousands of practitioners done by credible medical professionals in China showed a strong correlation between several indicators of mental health - less stress, a greater sense of well-being, and a more harmonious family life -- and the practice of Falun Gong. Falun Gong is now practiced in 55 countries outside China. There have been no reports of the mental health problems that the Chinese government claims Falun Gong causes. If the uniform experience of all countries outside China contradicts the propaganda of the Chinese government, how can one avoid the conclusion that this propaganda is nothing but lies?

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Information blockages prevent the Chinese public and international media from knowing the truth

The behavior of the government in handling cases of mental illness said to be caused by Falun Gong only supports the conclusion that these propaganda claims are lies. The government often threatens or bribes family members. It quickly cremates a victim's body without any forensic examination. It detains anyone who may know the truth of an incident. Investigations by international organizations such as Amnesty International are blocked. Foreign journalists who attempt to report on some of these cases (or in some cases merely to report on Falun Gong) are detained, harassed, have their licenses revoked, and have in some cases been deported. If the truth does manage to leak out, the government makes every effort to insure that the Chinese people never hear it. The government only allows censored versions of the western media to be broadcast in China and also censors the Internet.

The government does make other propaganda claims attacking Falun Gong, but these claims have had little success. The government has labeled Falun Gong as "anti-society" and "anti-government," and made a number of attacks on the character of the founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi. The Chinese populace has been through over fifty years of ideological campaigns by the Chinese Communists. Those who are middle-aged remember the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, and those who are young remember the slaughter of the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. This population is understandably cynical about government campaigns, and likely recognizes the government charges of being "anti-social", "anti-government" and the attack on a personality to be the old stand-by tactics of party ideologists.

The claim that Falun Gong might damage those who practice it, though, fits more neatly the temper of today's China. In a society in which everyone seems to be trying to get rich as fast as possible, and self-interest is now understood to be the new ethic, the charge that Falun Gong damages the individual gets people's attention. Certainly, the greatest propaganda success the Chinese government has had against Falun Gong was the initial public reaction to the video scenes in the hospital of the girl Liu Siying, allegedly burned in the Tiananmen Square immolations.

No matter how heavy handed the government's tactics in attempting to slander Falun Gong, one cannot deny that these slanders have had some effect on the Chinese population. The psychiatric profession in China has played an indispensable role in this effort. If the psychiatrists of China were merely silent about the claims made by the government that silence would speak volumes to the Chinese people. In a society in which every act has political meaning, not taking part in the campaign against Falun Gong would be instantly understood as a protest against that campaign. Instead of not taking part, the psychiatrists of China have given this campaign credibility. They have attested to the spurious claims of mental illness, and have themselves becoming agents of the state's campaign of terror. By locking up practitioners in mental hospitals, China's psychiatrists send a powerful message to the population of China as a whole that Falun Gong is in fact implicated in causing mental illness. By torturing them with (among other methods) the abuse of psychotropic drugs and ECT, China's psychiatrists in the end produce "patients" who certainly seem to need psychiatric care. For those who don't know the truth, this abuse of psychiatry seems in fact to justify the government's most damaging charges against Falun Gong. For those who do know the truth, this abuse of psychiatry, which can literally destroy the higher consciousness of those who oppose the persecution, may be the most terrifying weapon in a formidable arsenal of terror.

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Any violation of the WPA's standards stated in the Declaration of Madrid should not be tolerated

With the exception of foreign companies operating in China, there are no independent associations in China. All parts of society are controlled by the Communist Party. Those individuals who head the Chinese psychiatric association hold their positions at the pleasure of party chiefs. The same is true of the heads of other Chinese medical associations or the heads of hospitals or clinics, etc. Once the Party adopts a line, everyone in China is required to show enthusiastic support for the government line. Dissenting opinions are not allowed.

Given this social structure, the profession of psychiatry has no meaningful independent existence in China. That profession, like all parts of society, is required to serve the political goals of the Communist Party, and because of the particular effects of some psychiatric treatments, our profession is unfortunately peculiarly suitable to advancing some of the goals of a police state. The individual psychiatrist has no resources for standing outside the Party's control, and the failure to do the Party's bidding results in sanctions that may range in severity from the mere loss of a promotion up to summary execution. The abuses of psychiatry in China are not an aberration, and they are not due to a failure of education or of understanding. These abuses are rather the explicit goal of government policy. Any attempts to respond to this abuse that do not understand this basic fact are doomed to be misguided, and might even be harmful.

Even though we may understand the tremendous pressure the Chinese government can put on China's psychiatrists, this does not excuse the abuse in which they engage. At the same time, this abuse of psychiatry in China forces upon the World Psychiatric Association issues of the gravest character, ones that threaten the very integrity of the psychiatric profession itself in this new century. The WPA faced a similar challenge in the past: the abuse by psychiatrists in the Soviet Union of political dissidents. The actions the WPA took at that time helped stop this abuse, rescue the psychiatric profession in the Soviet Union from being an arm of the police state, and preserve the good name of psychiatry itself.

The challenge facing the WPA today is far more difficult: the psychiatric abuse occurring in China is the worst ever known in history. The typical cases of abuse are more severe than in the Soviet Union, often resulting in permanent, irreversible damage, and the scope of the abuse is much wider. The Soviet Union used the abuse of psychiatry as a weapon against a handful of dissidents. The government of Jiang Zemin is using abuse as a weapon in a campaign against tens of millions of its own people. This situation urgently demands that we respond. At the time of writing this letter, there have been over one thousand Falun Gong practitioners involuntarily admitted to mental hospitals, at least six have died as consequence of psychiatric abuse, and many have become physically and mentally disabled (http://www.faluninfo.net/hrreports/PsychAbuse.pdf.) Ninety hospitals are known to have taken part in the persecution. Over one hundred thousand practitioners have been imprisoned and over four hundred and thirty have died by police torture (http://www.faluninfo.net/devstories/deathcases/index.asp.)

As human beings, we have a duty to aid those who are suffering. As doctors, we have made that duty our vocation. As psychiatrists we have a duty to preserve and enhance the ability of our profession to respond to human suffering. As scientists, we have a duty to the truth, and to assuring the responsible use of discoveries whose only legitimate purpose is to relieve suffering. In whatever manner members of the WPA choose to consider ourselves in relation to the abuse of Falun Gong practitioners in China, we must see ourselves as uniquely called upon to respond. Our compassion, our self-respect, our duty to our profession, and our responsibility for the future all call upon us to act.

With time, together we can help reproduce in China the good effects the WPA had in the Soviet Union. If we fail to act, our silence will be known by us all to be culpable, and will be a source of shame as long as our organization exists. Let's begin by calling for an immediate, independent investigation of the abuse of psychiatry in China.

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Sincerely,

(Names omitted to avoid Chinese embassy's harassment)

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* What is Falun Gong? Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is an ancient practice for the mind and the body. Through a combination of studying the books Falun Dafa, and performing the exercises, meditation, and following the principles of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance, practitioners strive to become better people.

Falun Gong has roots in traditional Chinese culture. It was taught in private for thousands of years before being made public in 1992 by Mr. Li Hongzhi. Millions of people all over the world have chosen to make the practice of Falun Dafa a part of their daily lives.

In 1998, health surveys of 30,000 practitioners were performed in China. They showed a 60% rate of complete recovery from previous illnesses. Many people also stopped abusing drugs and alcohol when embracing the practice.

Falun Gong has not always been the object of enmity of the Chinese government. In 1993 at the Oriental Health Expo in Beijing, Falun Gong was recognized as the "Star Qigong School" and Mr. Li Hongzhi received "The Award for Advancing Boundary Science" and "Qigong Master Most Acclaimed by the Masses." Mr. Li Hongzhi was also awarded "The Honor Certificate Conferred by A Foundation under the Ministry of Public Security of China" in December 1993. The Ministry of Public Security of China published a report in the newspaper in September 1993 and a thank-you letter was issued from the foundation under the same ministry in August 1993. Before the persecution many newspapers and magazine articles listed the numerous health benefits of practicing Falun Gong and praised Falun Gong for the money its practitioners saved the government due to their no longer needing health care.