Independence punished by psychiatry in Russia (2)

Below is the continuation of the statement from Andrei Novikov, the government critic and journalist who has been illegally held against his will in psychiatric confinement (see Part 1 here). Novikov, who is supported by international press freedom groups such as Reporters without Borders, made a plea for political asylum on an exclusive video. - Grigory Pasko

Andrei Novikov’s monologue continued...

….Also I was quarrelsome with policemen. I demanded of them that they show identification. Once a policeman beat me up. I turned for help to the police. There they told me that since I didn’t know the surname of the policeman who had beaten me up, then there was no element of a crime, either. They taught me that you need to demand that they show identification. And so I started demanding. They wouldn’t give it. I complained about them to the internal security administration. This too they didn’t forget.

I have always been against the Chechen war. I was against them sending regional sections of the police there – that’s not their job, to fight with peaceful inhabitants. And also I was published on the «Chechen-Press».

In sum, these facts all came together, apparently, into some kind of single whole, and they decided to lock me up in the madhouse. For a long time. By the way, before sending me to the nut-house, local employees of the FSB proposed to me that I take myself there on my own, by voluntary initiative, so to speak.

And also I wrote a statement on account of the arrest of the journalist Boris Stomakhin. They had convicted him for his articles, in which he, supposedly, was inflaming nationalist discord. I sent a statement to the procuracy in the capacity of a manifesto: lock me up too. If you’re locking people up for their thoughts, then I too express the same kinds of thoughts.

And they listened, as can be seen, to this proposal of mine.

On 19 January 2007, I was all of a sudden released from Yaroslavl as well and I came to Rybinsk. It turned out that nobody knew anything about me: not about the trial, not about the psychiatric hospital... I phoned my friend Valery Lebedev, told him everything. Boris Krein also found out. Information started to appear on websites.

I understood that they had released me accidentally, by mistake. Sure enough, after a certain time they drove up and took me away. The Head Doctor of the Rybinsk psychiatric hospital, Tatiana Morozova, said that I need to be held before trial – Irina Vasilievna Popova, a benevolent person, she was for letting me go. For nearly 3 months I was found in the psychiatric hospital. At the trial, which took place in May, the court decreed: to hold me in forcible treatment for another half year or year.

So I stayed in the Rybinsk psychiatric hospital until 18 December 2007. On 6 December, there took place a consilium of doctors, who came to the conclusion that I am not in need of further treatment. This took place, I consider, thanks to the intervention in the case of the president of the Independent Psychiatric Expert Commission, professor Yuri Savenko.

The Commission gave consent for outpatient forcible treatment.

In essence, I now find myself in some kind of in-between situation. They can lock me up in inpatient treatment any time they please. This is why I ask the public to monitor my situation.

All the more so because the times now are troubling. The power is aggressive. «United Russia» has a constitutional majority in the Duma. They have already initiated a new law «On psychiatric aid»,