Uzbek (human rights) activist held in mental hospital (The Guardian)

[Up2Late]

(Good thing this is another one of our "Partners in the fight against Terror," or at least he was until recently.)

Uzbek activist held in mental hospital

Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Wednesday August 31, 2005
The Guardian

A leading human rights activist in Uzbekistan has been locked up in a psychiatric hospital in an echo of Soviet-style practices after distributing anti-government leaflets which prosecutors claimed insulted the country's emblem.

Elena Urlayeva had earlier criticised President Islam Karimov for the Andijan massacre in May when government troops allegedly shot hundreds of innocent protesters.

Mrs Urlayeva, who is a member of the opposition Free Peasants party, was arrested in the capital, Tashkent, on Saturday and incarcerated in the mental health ward of a city hospital....

(clip)

...A police spokesman confirmed to Interfax news agency that Mrs Urlayeva was arrested for distributing leaflets with a caricature of the Uzbek national emblem: a fairytale bird with outstretched wings representing freedom that was depicted as downcast and bedraggled.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1559343,00.html?gusrc=rss>
(more at link above)

[wli]

1. coming soon to the US, c.f. New Freedom Commission on Mental Health n/t

[tom_paine]

2. Beat me to it. I am hoping we will have 20 or 30 years until full Soviet

ization.

This may be wildly optimistic, but hope is hope.

[wli]

4. We have our own unique dual strategy.

Something of a mix between Stalin and Hitler. The Stalinesque bits are largely already in place. There are prisoners who have been doped into unconsciousness during their trials with psychiatric drugs where they were sentenced to death. Involuntary commitment is already almost entirely judge's fiat and used to sentence people for things not technically qualifying as crimes and/or to provide lengthier sentences at judges' discretion when the crimes would otherwise be too minor.

And so on and so forth. Bet your bottom dollar that the mandatory mental health screenings will be religiously, politically, and racially biased.

[wli]

5. Sorry, the other half of the strategy is the fascist part.

Which is mass imprisonment, mass rape, mass torture, and so on. We don't have the largest number of prisoners, the largest proportion of our population in prison, and the highest incident of prison rape of any country in the world for nothing. And we use them for slave labor, too.

Hell, even Abu Ghraib and Bagram were merely the exportation of our own prison system to Iraq and Afghanistan.

ON EDIT: added slave labor comment.

[Judi Lynn]

3. She should thank her lucky stars she hasn't been boiled YET.

What does she have that has earned her this special privilege? Too good for boiling or other torture?

Yeah, _Bush really knows how to pick "our" allies, god bless him. What a fine man.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

6. For more on our wonderful ally in Uzbekistan

see Craig Murray the ex Ambassador:

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/