Soviet torture row may split doctors

Press, 1 September 1977, Page 9

Soviet torture row may split doctors

NZPA-Reuter Honolulu

Dr Sydney Bloch, of Britain, has said that his country along with Australia, Canada, the United States, and some other European nations may withdraw from the World Psychiatric Association if the association fails to condemn the use of psychiatry to stifle political dissent.

“There have been murmurings that those countries may say to hell with the W.P.A., considering that it has abrogated all its rights to represent the world psychiatric community and doesn’t merit being in existence and the body may disintegrate,” Dr Bloch said. Dr Bloch, who heads an independent study group on the internment of dissenters, was chief spokesman at a news conference at which four psychiatrists and a former Russian political prisoner described the treatment

of political dissidents in the Soviet Union.

Dr Michael Nelson, of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, said the record of the world’s most respected psychiatric body had been “extremely poor” in explicitly condemning the imprisonment of dissidents. “My view is that the chance that the W.P.A. will change and do anything to condemn these practices during this session are 50 per cent or less than 50 per cent.” Dr Bloch said the matter had been “swept under the carpet” at the W.P.A’s last meeting, in Mexico City in 1971.

“Six years later, much information has come out of the Soviet Union,” he said. “Now the documentation and testimony is overwhelming and incontrovertible — that there is a pervasive misuse of Soviet psychiatry for political purposes, a systematic misuse of psy-

chiatry co-ordinated at the highest levels.” Dr Nelson said documentation coming out of Rumania, Bulgaria, East Germany, Argentina, and a few other countries, indicated that the Russian model was being imitated. “In the 305,” he said, “our history presented us with a prime example of what happens when the world remains silent in the face of documented abuse. I don’t think this group should be permitted to remain silent on this issue.” Dr Nelson said the three resolutions on condemnation might fail for lack of support from Western nations.

“The hold-outs are not from Third World Nations,” he said. “They are delegates from Western nations who still intend to remain silent out of purely political pragmatism, but who in remaining silent are guilty of complicity.’’