YOKOHAMA, Japan - Aug 26 (AFP) - Delegates from the world' s psychiatric associations agreed Monday to send representatives to China amid calls for an independent investigation into psychiatric abuses against dissidents, an official of a campaign group said.
The general assembly of the World Psychiatric Association agreed to send representatives to China and then set up a working group in the light of their visit, said Robert Van Voren, general secretary of the Geneva Initiative on Psychiatry, a foundation combatting the political abuse of psychiatry.
But the WPA meeting rejected a resolution tabled by Britain' s Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) calling for the WPA to send a fact-finding mission to China to investigate abuses, he said.
"It' s unclear what the working group will do," he said, adding that an RCP demand to be included in the decision about who would go to China was rejected, prompting the British professional association to abstain.
The representatives would visit China in spring 2003, and report back to the WPA executive committee by May 2003, Van Voren said.
WPA officials were not available to confirm the decision as their general assembly meeting was continuing behind closed doors during the six-day World Congress of Psychiatry here.
Pressure for the profession to act follows the publication earlier this month of a 300-page report detailing evidence of abuse by New York-based rights group Human Rights Watch and GIP.
The report said China incarcerated thousands of political dissidents in mental hospitals on a scale reminiscent of the former Soviet Union. It also said the practice was on the rise.
Those targeted included members of the banned Falungong spiritual movement, independent labour organisers and individuals who complain about official persecution, the report said.
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/db/Qhealth-mental-vote.R2Gn_CaQ.html
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