Psychiatric Oppression continues in Russia

In case people thought differently, political use of psychiatry continues to the present day

Criminal prosecution case No. 8706 against The Radical Politics newspaper (“Radikalnaya Politika”) and its editor Boris Stomakhin keeps gaining momentum. Mr. Stomakhin was subpoenaed for interrogation in the prosecutor’s office of North-Eastern Administrative District of the city of Moscow for April 26 at 1:00 PM to report to special investigator Kolobova S.N. (office phone 7(095) 688-9608), who is in charge of this filthy and outright repressive political case.

Ms. Kolobova told Mr. Stomakhin that psychiatric medical examination has already been scheduled for him for May 24, 2004, which she promised during the first interrogation on April 13.

It is not the first time when Putin’s government is trying to use psychiatric methods, notorious since the Soviet times, against the editor of The Radical Politics. Back then the KGB used to resort to its favorite trick to declare the dissidents, the opponents of the Soviet system, or just plainly thinking people, as mentally sick and lock them up in psychiatric wards, where they were injected huge doses of neuroleptics, which made them lose their mind and which was ruining their health, and where the dissidents were subjected to all sorts of physical tortures. FSB investigator I. Asochakov offered Mr. Stomakhin to undergo psychiatric medical examination last year, when Mr. Stomakhin was a witness in the previous case against The Radical Politics. There is also some confidential information that the FSB (Russian Federal Security Service, formerly known as the KGB) has been asking Mr. Stomakhin’s acquaintances and wondering about his mental health since the end of 2001.

Revolutionary Contact Union is hereby making a decided and strong protest against the revival of such practices in present-day Russia, even against the slightest attempts to return to punitive psychiatric methods. In expectation of the KGB-controlled psychiatric medical examination with the conclusions known in advance, we are publishing the document issued to Mr. Stomakhin on the results of his checkup by psychiatrists from Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia.