Dear Professor Dinesh Bhugra.
The victims of psychiatric coercion in Germany are
disgusted to learn that the WPA plans to hold its world
conference in October 2017 in Berlin. We, the people
who suffer from the crimes German psychiatrists
commit, disinvite the WPA.
In Germany we call psychiatrists state protected
criminals and nowhere in the world is this more true
than in Berlin. The industrialization of mass-murder
of psychiatric inmates in gas chambers was organized
in Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin, continuing up to
1941, when the staff, the technique and part of the
equipment was exported to the extermination camps
in occupied Poland. Henry Friedlander documents
this beginning of the holocaust in his book "The
Origins of the Nazi-Genocide". The mass-murder
in German psychiatries continued up to 1949 (from
1945-1949 without the Nazi regime) by systematic
starvation to death and lethal injections (Heinz
Faulstich documents this in his book, which Ernst
Klee refers to).
Should the WPA continue its plan to come to
Berlin for a world congress with the title: Psychiatry
of the 21st Century: Context, Controversies and
Commitment, the WPA would demonstrate that
also in Germany psychiatry can continue "business
as usual". That would be whitewashing the German
psychiatric mass-murder, because these crimes would
then be trivialized as being history of a past century
which can now be forgotten. Such a decision we
recognize as a solidarization with German psychiatry
and the crimes it has committed.
German psychiatrists are criminals not only
from 1939 to 1949; after 1949 German psychiatry
shamelessly continued the torture and cruel, inhuman
and degrading treatment and up until today it fails
to comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). In 2015 the UN
Human Rights office documented this in the report
by the CRPD committee, citation:
33. The Committee is deeply concerned that the
State party [Germany] does not recognize the use of
physical and chemical restraints, solitary confinement
and other harmful practices as acts of torture. http://
tinyurl.com/CPRD-report
Also for this reason we claim psychiatrists to be
state protected criminals. The Guidelines of the
Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
rule on Article 14 of the CRPD the right to liberty and
security of persons with disabilities. Any psychiatric
incarceration without a prior authorization by a
psychiatric advance directive (PAD) of the person
in question is now a crime of deprivation of liberty.
Any forced psychiatric treatment without a prior
authorization in a PAD is now a crime of bodily harm
and torture/CID treatment.
The WPA should therefore hold its world congress
outside of Germany. Additionally we recommend
holding a Thematic Conference on the history of
psychiatry, including excursions to the remaining gas
chambers in Bernburg and Hadamar which are still
in their original condition, to other memorial sites
and to the German state archive with more than 7,000
files of murdered victims.
Yours sincerely,
René Talbot and Uwe Pankow
For the board of the
Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft
Psychiatrie-Erfahrener
PS. We are sending copies of this letter to some
of your WPA colleagues.
The victims of psychiatric coercion in Germany are
disgusted to learn that the WPA plans to hold its world
conference in October 2017 in Berlin. We, the people
who suffer from the crimes German psychiatrists
commit, disinvite the WPA.
In Germany we call psychiatrists state protected
criminals and nowhere in the world is this more true
than in Berlin. The industrialization of mass-murder
of psychiatric inmates in gas chambers was organized
in Tiergartenstrasse 4 in Berlin, continuing up to
1941, when the staff, the technique and part of the
equipment was exported to the extermination camps
in occupied Poland. Henry Friedlander documents
this beginning of the holocaust in his book "The
Origins of the Nazi-Genocide". The mass-murder
in German psychiatries continued up to 1949 (from
1945-1949 without the Nazi regime) by systematic
starvation to death and lethal injections (Heinz
Faulstich documents this in his book, which Ernst
Klee refers to).
Should the WPA continue its plan to come to
Berlin for a world congress with the title: Psychiatry
of the 21st Century: Context, Controversies and
Commitment, the WPA would demonstrate that
also in Germany psychiatry can continue "business
as usual". That would be whitewashing the German
psychiatric mass-murder, because these crimes would
then be trivialized as being history of a past century
which can now be forgotten. Such a decision we
recognize as a solidarization with German psychiatry
and the crimes it has committed.
German psychiatrists are criminals not only
from 1939 to 1949; after 1949 German psychiatry
shamelessly continued the torture and cruel, inhuman
and degrading treatment and up until today it fails
to comply with the UN Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). In 2015 the UN
Human Rights office documented this in the report
by the CRPD committee, citation:
33. The Committee is deeply concerned that the
State party [Germany] does not recognize the use of
physical and chemical restraints, solitary confinement
and other harmful practices as acts of torture. http://
tinyurl.com/CPRD-report
Also for this reason we claim psychiatrists to be
state protected criminals. The Guidelines of the
Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
rule on Article 14 of the CRPD the right to liberty and
security of persons with disabilities. Any psychiatric
incarceration without a prior authorization by a
psychiatric advance directive (PAD) of the person
in question is now a crime of deprivation of liberty.
Any forced psychiatric treatment without a prior
authorization in a PAD is now a crime of bodily harm
and torture/CID treatment.
The WPA should therefore hold its world congress
outside of Germany. Additionally we recommend
holding a Thematic Conference on the history of
psychiatry, including excursions to the remaining gas
chambers in Bernburg and Hadamar which are still
in their original condition, to other memorial sites
and to the German state archive with more than 7,000
files of murdered victims.
Yours sincerely,
René Talbot and Uwe Pankow
For the board of the
Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft
Psychiatrie-Erfahrener
PS. We are sending copies of this letter to some
of your WPA colleagues.