In half
of the 193 states on this globe people are being kept prisoner due
to their religious beliefs, political convictions, race, or gender.
The other half of humankind calm themselves with the moral supremacy
they proclaim to have gained over non-democratic states for observance
of human rights. And indeed, much has been reached since the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights was issued in 1948 and in the process

of its
implementation in the law of nations. But do Western societies actually
live up to theirself-defined ethical standards, or are the moral merits
undeserved that the democratic reasoning ascribes itself? It seems
that the vertical division does not hold, and that there is tacit
violation of human rights not only in remote corners but also in unsuspected
realms.

The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights ensures the fundamental right to liberty
to all human beings, the right to freedom of thought, conscience and
religion, as well as the right to freedom of opinion and expression
(Articles 3, 18 and 19). These are guaranteed to everyone
„without distinction of any kind“ (Article 2).
They are inviolable and indivisible rights. No legitimate limitations
may be imposed on holding a belief. Manifestation of belief may only
be restricted when „it is necessary to protect public safety,
order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of
others“. Unless a danger of this kind needs to be averted, no
intrusion is justified¹. It is, of course, also quite irrelevant
whether the belief or opinion held is true or not for the individual
to be entitled to the rights in question. In fact, it is one of the
principles of reason that its utterances be disputable.

Whence
then the pressure on some to refrain from their thoughts and beliefs
in the so-called open societies? Involuntary detention in psychiatric
institutions on the allegation of insanity is, in a host of cases,
a manner of imposing restrictions to the rights to liberty and to
freedom of thought and belief. The woman who believes she induced
the fall of the Berlin wall and firmly states her belief, without
ever presenting a danger to anyone including herself, can tell a story
about the pressure to give up her convictions. Her life has been an
Odyssey between section and drug treatment with the explicit purpose
of making her abandon those opinions. As a person stigmatized as a
mental patient her fundamental rights have been severely violated.
Is she, in a bizarre way, a prisoner of conscience? In prevention
of what crime is she locked up? Thus, ex negativo we understand
the odd necessity to confirm, as it is done in the ‘Principles for
the Protection of Persons with Mental Illnesses and for the Improvement
of Mental Health Care’² that „every person has the
right to exercise all civil, political, economic, social and cultural
rights as recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights“.

Society
protects itself from deviance. The line between acceptability and
alleged ‘disorder of thought form’ is rigidly drawn by the stronger
party. If it cannot be, it must not be – in defence of this axiom,
reason is administered through force and coercion by the medical system.
Doctors are presumed to be competent judges and authorities in matters
of thought and belief in that they are legally designated to certify
whether someone is sound or not. Drug treatment serves to blur and
disrupt the belief that there is a right to freedom of thought and
that, of course, is at variance with the provisions of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. No evidence has been produced that there
is such a thing as mental illness apart from certain symptoms; hence
the serious quest for a yet-to-be-discovered biological cause, like
a genetic defect.

Forced
conformity is an illness from which reason needs to convalesce. This
is in accordance with the spirit of the UN Declaration of Human Rights
which was set forth as a response „to the barbarous acts which
have outraged the conscience of mankind“ in this century
of war and genocide (Preamble). The Declaration is a document
to promote liberty and tolerance while asserting the universality
of the principles it advances. If it allowed for discrimination on
the grounds of reason, it would expose itself to a deep self-contradiction,
for it would then restrict the validity of the principles it pronounces
as universal. Mental health legislation concentrates on the right
to treatment and keeps silent about the right to freedom from fear
called for in the Declaration. The concept of psychiatric mental illness
and the coercion which impairs the freedom of thought have to be reconsidered
in terms of violation of human rights.

This
requires an investigation. Let him ask back who periodically turns
into Jesus Christ and enters a psychiatric institution to receive
the cruel tortures and humiliations men have done to each other throughout
the centuries. Who is then bound up, but perfectly able to determine
for whose sake.

Renate
Bauer