{"id":444269,"date":"2025-09-22T22:38:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T22:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/444269\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T22:38:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T22:38:18","slug":"russia-reviving-soviet-style-coercive-psychiatry-measures-to-quash-dissent-says-un-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/444269\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia reviving Soviet-style coercive psychiatry measures to quash dissent, says UN expert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia is reviving Soviet-era tactics such as forced psychiatric treatment to silence dissenters and anti-war voices in an increasingly repressive environment, according to a United Nations expert.<\/p>\n

Rights groups say President Vladimir Putin’s government has lurched further into authoritarianism since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but Moscow denies that and accuses the West of a smear campaign.<\/p>\n

A report this month by Mariana Katzarova, the UN’s special rapporteur on rights in Russia, found that state-sponsored repression was escalating and becoming systematic via national security laws and other measures.<\/p>\n

“Punitive psychiatry has returned as a tool against anti-war voices,” Ms Katzarova told reporters in Geneva on Monday.<\/p>\n

Putin approved Novichok poisoining of former Russian spy<\/a><\/p>\n

An inquiry into the death of a British woman from Novichok in 2018 hears allegations Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the delivery of the lethal nerve agent to the UK.<\/p>\n

The Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva pointed to a September 8 statement by its foreign minister saying that Moscow did not recognise her mandate and called her work illegitimate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moscow has previously called criticism of its rights record unfounded.<\/p>\n

Since the invasion of Ukraine, it has passed stronger laws to punish dissenters and perceived traitors<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ms Katzarova said torture, criminal prosecution and coercive psychiatry were among the measures being used, with the latter documented in an average 23 cases annually since 2022, compared to five per year from 2015 to 2021.<\/p>\n

“It’s the old Soviet tool of getting dissidents, in this case, anti-war activists, also journalists,” she said.<\/p>\n

Thousands of Russians arrested over views on Ukraine war\u00a0<\/p>\n

In March, Reuters reviewed case materials of two female activists who described the scarring ordeal of being sent by court order to undergo psychiatric assessments at a Siberian hospital.<\/p>\n

Some of the coercive psychiatry measures included invasive and unnecessary tests, and being admitted open-endedly as a psychiatric patient.<\/p>\n

Ms Katzarova gave the example of journalist Maria Ponomarenko<\/a>, whom she says was ordered to undergo compulsory psychiatric treatment for maintaining her anti-war stance.<\/p>\n

Ms Ponomarenko was imprisoned for spreading “fake news” about the war in Ukraine in 2023 and handed an additional sentence of 10 years in March.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin says such measures are essential to maintain domestic stability and accuses Western intelligence agencies of trying to destabilise Russia.<\/p>\n

Ms Katzarova said laws on foreign agents and spreading fake news were being harnessed “massively” to suppress dissent and critics, by portraying journalists, political opponents and anti-war activists as enemies of the state.<\/p>\n

Just over 20,000 people have been arrested for expressing an anti-war position since the full-scale Ukraine invasion began, according to Russian rights group OVD-Info.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia is reviving Soviet-era tactics such as forced psychiatric treatment to silence dissenters and anti-war voices in an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[149940,149943,149941,149942,332,12022,657,7498,333,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-444269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-anti-war-voices","9":"tag-dissent","10":"tag-forced-psychiatric-treatment","11":"tag-marian-katzarova","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-soviet-union","14":"tag-ukraine","15":"tag-un","16":"tag-vladimir-putin","17":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115250351581341156","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}