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Chinese Dissident Tells of Abuse in Asylum (Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times, 11/09/05)

They are known in Chinese as ankang, or "peace and health." But former inmates describe the country's police-run mental hospitals as decidedly less-than-serene places, with one recently freed political prisoner telling of sadistic nurses who performed electroshock therapy while other patients were forced to watch.

The unexpected August release and exile of political prisoner Wang Wanxing after 13 years in an asylum has shone a rare light on the communist regime's use of psychiatry as a tool of repression.

In an extended telephone interview from Frankfurt, Germany, last week, the 56-year-old Wang said he saw a political prisoner die after being force-fed while on a hunger strike.

The facility in Beijing where he was treated also made frequent use of electrified acupuncture needles, he said, alternating between high and low dosages to keep patients off balance, and fed them powerful drugs that blunted their will to resist. Wang said he developed a technique for hiding the pills in his mouth and would spit them out afterward to avoid drowsiness and other side effects.

"Of course, I don't consider myself crazy," Wang said. "I don't think they should put people in mental hospitals for political reasons. I think they did it to me because they didn't want to send me to court, which would have brought a lot of international attention."

Wang was picked up on the eve of the third anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown for unfurling a banner in the square that criticized the Communist Party and called on Beijing to reevaluate the event. "I've never regretted what I did in 1992," he said. "If time were turned back, I'd do it again."

According to records given to Germany when Wang was released, his diagnosis was paranoia.

It's not paranoia when the state really is after you.