Mental Hospital Escapees in China: Insane, or Political Prisoners?

Forty-two patients who escaped from a mental hospital in China might not all have been insane, internet users suspect.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is notorious for persecuting and locking up innocent people.  So it wouldn’t come as a surprise if some of the “mental patients” held in that hospital were actually, for example, people who dared to complain about the Party, or even practitioners of Falun Gong, the peaceful Chinese meditation practice that has been severely persecuted by the CCP for fourteen years.

Xinhua, a communist mouthpiece media, reported that six or seven mental patients were the masterminds behind the escape, according to the Epoch Times.  The group of patients surrounded a doctor, took his key, and opened the door.

Other patients followed them outside.  In total, 42 patients escaped the hospital, called the Teng County Third People’s Hospital of Wuzhou, but the police ended up catching and returning them all.

As the Times points out, Chinese netizens aren’t buying the idea that mentally ill patients organized the escape.

“How can a group of insane people plot to run away?” deputy chief magazine editor Luo Changping commented according to the Times. “How can they convince 80 percent of the other insane residents (to go with them) and get past the monitoring medical staff? How many of them are not really insane? How many evil stories are hidden behind this?”

Plenty of “evil stories” have already been reported about perfectly sane people who were placed in mental institutions in China.  Many of them are Falun Gong practitioners.

A 42-year-old Falun Gong practitioner named Mr. Liu Yong has been imprisoned in a mental hospital for 12 years because he steadfastly refused to give up his faith in the ancient meditation practice, according to a report by Minghui.org.

The report states that the Baoding Mental Hospital, where Mr. Liu was placed, has been doing the CCP’s bidding and has been responsible for the deaths of at least 24 Falun Gong practitioners.

The CCP created a new law in May of this year that was supposed to make sure mentally healthy people wouldn’t be treated for mental illness, Minghui.org reported.  However, the cruel and unnecessary treatment continues, including forcing sane patients to take harsh and mind-altering drugs.

Sources: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/172338-patients-believed-sane-escape-mental-hospital-in-china/

http://en.minghui.org/html/articles/2013/5/30/140205.html