minimum. 1. The Congress should publicize the work of the Congressional Ad Hoc Monitoring Committee on South Africa and seek other means by which the Committee or Congress can take a strong public stance against torture and the maltreatment of detainees; 2. Our embassy in South Africa should be instructed to send observers to political trials in South Africa and to speak out forcefully against torture when it is exposed during court hearings; 3. We should provide moral and material support for the families of detainees, and 4. Reinforce and expand the ban on exports of items that may be used for torture. There are other steps that might be taken, but these are at least the To some extent, it is difficult to address the question of torture in South Africa because torture is, in part, an attitude. The problem is that the Government of South Africa considers itself to be under seige both internally and externally. As a minority government lacking the popular support of the vast majority of its people, South Africa exhibits a seige mentality which gives rise to, and supports the possibility of torture. The Administration has argued that it has limited influence in South Africa and that what influence it has, must be exercised through quiet diplomacy. The policy of constructive engagement was suppose to accomplish this. However, the record for the first three years is not good. There have been eight deaths in detention, and torture is as widespread as ever. It is perhaps not fair to make comparisions, but with respect to human rights improvements, the situation was far better three years ago. If ever a time exist for the Administration to demonstrate that constructive engagement is a viable alternative to public condemnation, that time is rapidly running out. In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, we should note that South Africa is a tortured society. I have spoken here this morning regarding a rather narrow definition of torture. But, I think it is important to note that there are other kinds of torture that take place in South Africa. The torture that occurs when communities are uprooted and dumped in areas that barely support life. The torture that occurs when human beings are forced to conduct their lives according to laws that deny human rights and denigrate human dignity. The torture that occurs when families are torn apart by laws insensitive to human values. These are not the questions that can be answered today. But because they are important to black South Africa, and because black South Africans are determined to bring about a change in their country, there will continue to be torture in South Africa. Finally, Mr. Chairman, despite our diverse geographical interest; despite our differences in experiences; despite the fact that it may have been only this hearing that brought us together, we share, all of us here, an abiding, if often unstated concern for the basic dignity of all human beings. Torture is a basic affront; a fundamental assault on the very integrity of each and every one of us. Our efforts must be devoted to suppressing and eradicating this essential weakness, this essential evil which would permit those with power to abuse and ahhihlate something that is not theirs to harm, nor theirs to destroy. One of us is all of us. To torture one is to torture humanity. What small things we do here today may be the important steps that ensures our future as a people, a nation, a planet. That is why we are here. I am please to have had this opportunity to offer my views on this extremely important question of torture in the eighties. 1 Mr. YATRON. Thank you, Mr. Arnold, for your statement and also your recommendations. Our next witness is Dr. Alexander Voloshanovich. Dr. Voloshanovich, you may proceed. STATEMENT OF DR. ALEXANDER VOLOSHANOVICH, FORMER SOVIET PSYCHIATRIST Dr. VOLOSHANOVICH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The reason I am here is on behalf of my friends and colleagues in the Soviet Union. I want to tell you about my experiences as a former citizen of the Soviet Union and practitioner in psychiatry there. In the Soviet Union, psychiatry is a branch of medicine but psychiatric facilities are used in a rather unique way for torture, routinely by Government with the full support of the psychiatric establishment and the authorities. Ordinary rank and file doctors, in fact, have no opportunity to protest against such practices and very limited indeed opportunities to avoid participation in such practices. I left the Soviet Union in 1980. It had been known for quite awhile that psychiatry in the Soviet Union was used rather controversially, and the evidence for this reached the west long, long before. Actually, as a routine practice, it began to be used in such a way for oppression during Khrushchev's time, the beginning of 1960's. During the 1960's and the beginning of 1970's, there was collected quite convincing evidence about the use of Soviet psychiatry for oppression of its citizens. I am talking about my own experiences there. My first case of abuse of psychiatry for repression against citizens, a clear-cut case, happened at my job, routine job, in a state hospital. Medical help is all governmental in the Soviet Union, I described this case in the submitted paper. It was a case of a worker who was punished unjustly at his work, used as a scapegoat, in fact for the mistakes of his superiors. And, in his struggle for restoration of his name and reputation he lost his job and because he was very disturbing for authorities at work and local authorities, KGB took him to our hospital. The first attempt failed, as the doctor in charge of emergency unit refused to accept him in the hospital on the grounds of his absolute sanity. Pretty soon, he was detained in another psychiatric hospital, and treated very harshly with neuroleptic drugs there which were used actually not for medical treatment, but in attempt to break his determination, his attempts to defend his own rights. And, later on, he was transported back to our hospital, which served his catchment area. It was a reasonably fortunate case. The doctor who saw him previously and myself, managed to organize an authoritative psychiatric commission, which reviewed his diagnosis and they immediately discharged him. And, actually, this case made me think about my role in this system. It was a clear cut case of abuse. I had come across less convincing cases before, but exactly this case made me decide. And, very soon after this case, I started to work for the Commission, a group of people in Moscow who organized themselves into an unofficial commission. The Moscow Commission, who collected data about use of psychiatry for repression against citizens, I started work for the Commission as a medical consultant. They weren't professionals. I collected material, conducted routine professional, examinations, and made my psychiatric conclusions on people who were detained in the pyschiatric hospitals, on controversial grounds, and who had tried to find defense with the Commission. They had usually heard about the Commission from Western radios' Russian services. All together, I compiled 41 comprehensive reports on such people. I can't claim that all of them were perfectly sane. There were, among all them, a minority of two or three in doubt or who were really mentally ill persons. There were absolutely sane persons in the majority and there were a few neurotics or disturbed personalities, which was understandable in the situation they found themselves. My conclusion on all of them was rather uniform in the sense that I didn't find either medical or legal grounds for their compulsory detention to psychiatric hospitals or their treatment there. They were given medication like neuroleptics, and drugs causing feverish states, pyrogenic drugs, like sulfazine considered obsolete and valueless in the West. It is now in the West a forgotten drug, but it is still widely used in the Soviet practice, mainly for punishment and repression against persons under question. This commission started working in January 1977, and I joined them in autumn, September or October 1977. From the very beginning of the existence of this commission, the members were persecuted and harassed by the Soviet Government which was supported in this by the psychiatric establishment of the country. At first, one of the founders of the commission was arrested. In turn, they were all arrested and the commission was eliminated; as such, soon after, I left the country. All members of the commission were arrested and they were confined to labor camps and prisons which are rather hard conditions for survival, and most of them were sentenced, for a second, and some of them even the third time, while still being imprisoned. Now, some of them have been released under condition that they sign documents promising nonparticipation in any similar sort of activity and the commission ceased to exist. So, Soviet authorities have now managed to shut up all sources of information about their abuse of psychiatry for punishment. This is why I'm here, and I'm trying to act on their behalf. [Dr. Voloshanovich's prepared statement follows:] PREPARED STATEMENT OF DR. ALEXANDER VOLOSHANOVICH, FORMER SOVIET Before the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes began its work in January, 1977, not many people were familiar with the wrongful imprisonment and abuse of political prisoners in Soviet psychiatric hospitals. Until its demise four years later this unofficial group from Moscow was instrumental in calling world attention, to that special Soviet form of torture where political prisoners are tormented with drugs that cause extreme pain and confusion. I have talked with dozens of people who've endured such treatment. Clearly the Special.. Psychiatric Hospital is a far worse hell than regular Soviet prisons and labor camps. As a psychiatrist, I knew about the Special Psychiatric Hospitals, but, of course, could never have visited these well-guarded prisons. My first direct contact with the gross misdeeds of my profession came when the KGB brought a Mr. Grogulev to the Moscow Regional Psychiatric Hospital..... Number 20, where I worked. Grogulev was in trouble for protesting to the government about the loss of his job. After one of our doctors refused to admit the perfectly sane Grogulev, the KGB took him to another psychiatric hospital, where he remained for three weeks. He was then brought back to our hospital, admitted, and almost immediately released. When the doctor responsible was harrassed for acting in the only medically correct way, I began to have serious doubts about remaining in the field of psychiatry. } |