Cultic Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2003, Page 164
activities. The government still deals harshly with unregistered groups arresting leaders
and raiding meeting places.‖8 Apologists for the repressive regime will imply that the
suspect unregistered groups are wild and dangerous cults, potential Aum Shinrikyos. A few
may be, but according to Professor Lowe, ―it is surely significant that the number of
practicing Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, affiliated with unregistered churches is
thought to be much greater than the number in the official churches.‖ ―While the beliefs
and practices of many of the unregistered churches meet general standards of Roman
Catholic or Evangelical Protestant orthodoxy, some deviate significantly.‖9 These latter ―less
mainstream groups‖ receive the most intense scrutiny and are most likely to be labeled
―cults.‖
Of course to deviate from the mainstream (in addition to being unregistered) is not
necessarily to be violent or destructive. In the United States it is not customary to apply
intense state scrutiny to Holy Rollers or other out-of-the-mainstream groups. Mr. Rosedale
does not make any distinction between a group that might be dangerous or abhorrent to
practically any society, such as an Aum Shinrikyo, and a group or leader who might be
dangerous to an entrenched, authoritarian party autocracy, such as a Panchen Lama who is
not chosen by the government or an unregistered Catholic Church which recognizes the
Pope rather than the state as its ultimate authority in ecclesiastical matters. But a
defensive, authoritarian ruling party is likely to conflate the two categories of ―danger‖ and
see politically dissident sects as pathological in general.
We have noted above that involuntary commitment is one of the measures which is applied
to persistent loyalists of Falun Gong (as stated by Dr. Lowe). The use of ―psychiatric terror‖
in China against political and religious dissidents has recently attracted substantial attention
in the form of a book, Dangerous Minds by Robin Munro co-published by Human Rights
Watch,10 and a review essay ―China‘s Psychiatric Terror‖ on the Munro volume published in
the New York Review of Books by Jonathon Mirsky.11 The World Psychiatric Association
(WPA) voted overwhelmingly last September to send a delegation China to ―investigate
charges that dissidents were being imprisoned and maltreated as ‗political maniacs‘ both in
regular mental hospitals and in police-run custodial institutions known as the Ankang.‖12 A
scheduled ―educational‖ visit of the MPA delegation next will focus specifically on the
treatment of Falun Gong devotees.13
According to Mirsky, Munro‘s book shows that the psychiatrists who staff the Ankang
institutions ―tend to assume their patients are mad because of their political beliefs or
actions. The diagnoses made in both the political dissident and Falun Gong cases, ranging
from ‗delusions of reform‘ to ‗paranoid psychosis‘, are highly reminiscent of the long-
discredited label of ‗sluggish schizophrenia‘ that the Soviets used to apply to their dissidents
and religious nonconformists.‖14
The number of alleged political prisoners detained in Chinese psychiatric facilities has
periodically risen and fallen. According to Munro there was a marked rise in 1979 after the
Democracy Wall episode and again after the Tiananmen Square demonstration in 1989
when many demonstrators and sympathizers were arrested.
The numbers detained by forensic psychiatrists declined again in the early
1990s. But with the persecution of the Falun Gong, beginning in mid-1999,
tens of thousands were detained, arrested, charged, imprisoned, and
sometimes tortured—and several hundred were sent to mental hospitals. The
number of those detained is now so high that many are confined in ordinary
mental hospitals rather than the Ankang institutions in which apparently there
is not enough room.15
As Mirsky notes, owing to secrecy the details as to what actually happens to religious and
political dissidents in Ankangs is hard to determine. Munro presents a 1987 account by a
activities. The government still deals harshly with unregistered groups arresting leaders
and raiding meeting places.‖8 Apologists for the repressive regime will imply that the
suspect unregistered groups are wild and dangerous cults, potential Aum Shinrikyos. A few
may be, but according to Professor Lowe, ―it is surely significant that the number of
practicing Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, affiliated with unregistered churches is
thought to be much greater than the number in the official churches.‖ ―While the beliefs
and practices of many of the unregistered churches meet general standards of Roman
Catholic or Evangelical Protestant orthodoxy, some deviate significantly.‖9 These latter ―less
mainstream groups‖ receive the most intense scrutiny and are most likely to be labeled
―cults.‖
Of course to deviate from the mainstream (in addition to being unregistered) is not
necessarily to be violent or destructive. In the United States it is not customary to apply
intense state scrutiny to Holy Rollers or other out-of-the-mainstream groups. Mr. Rosedale
does not make any distinction between a group that might be dangerous or abhorrent to
practically any society, such as an Aum Shinrikyo, and a group or leader who might be
dangerous to an entrenched, authoritarian party autocracy, such as a Panchen Lama who is
not chosen by the government or an unregistered Catholic Church which recognizes the
Pope rather than the state as its ultimate authority in ecclesiastical matters. But a
defensive, authoritarian ruling party is likely to conflate the two categories of ―danger‖ and
see politically dissident sects as pathological in general.
We have noted above that involuntary commitment is one of the measures which is applied
to persistent loyalists of Falun Gong (as stated by Dr. Lowe). The use of ―psychiatric terror‖
in China against political and religious dissidents has recently attracted substantial attention
in the form of a book, Dangerous Minds by Robin Munro co-published by Human Rights
Watch,10 and a review essay ―China‘s Psychiatric Terror‖ on the Munro volume published in
the New York Review of Books by Jonathon Mirsky.11 The World Psychiatric Association
(WPA) voted overwhelmingly last September to send a delegation China to ―investigate
charges that dissidents were being imprisoned and maltreated as ‗political maniacs‘ both in
regular mental hospitals and in police-run custodial institutions known as the Ankang.‖12 A
scheduled ―educational‖ visit of the MPA delegation next will focus specifically on the
treatment of Falun Gong devotees.13
According to Mirsky, Munro‘s book shows that the psychiatrists who staff the Ankang
institutions ―tend to assume their patients are mad because of their political beliefs or
actions. The diagnoses made in both the political dissident and Falun Gong cases, ranging
from ‗delusions of reform‘ to ‗paranoid psychosis‘, are highly reminiscent of the long-
discredited label of ‗sluggish schizophrenia‘ that the Soviets used to apply to their dissidents
and religious nonconformists.‖14
The number of alleged political prisoners detained in Chinese psychiatric facilities has
periodically risen and fallen. According to Munro there was a marked rise in 1979 after the
Democracy Wall episode and again after the Tiananmen Square demonstration in 1989
when many demonstrators and sympathizers were arrested.
The numbers detained by forensic psychiatrists declined again in the early
1990s. But with the persecution of the Falun Gong, beginning in mid-1999,
tens of thousands were detained, arrested, charged, imprisoned, and
sometimes tortured—and several hundred were sent to mental hospitals. The
number of those detained is now so high that many are confined in ordinary
mental hospitals rather than the Ankang institutions in which apparently there
is not enough room.15
As Mirsky notes, owing to secrecy the details as to what actually happens to religious and
political dissidents in Ankangs is hard to determine. Munro presents a 1987 account by a
