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Naked Russian artist cuts off ear lobe in protest of unnecessary psychiatric treatment

He is expected to be discharged from the hospital soon.

By Thor Benson
(Facebook/Oksana Shalygina)
(Facebook/Oksana Shalygina)

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KIEV, Ukraine, Oct. 20 (UPI) -- A Russian artist cut off his ear lobe on top of a city wall on Sunday in protest of his country putting political dissidents in psychiatric wards. The artist, Pyotr Pavlensky, is the same man who nailed his scrotum to the ground as a statement last year.

In April of this year, a man named Mikhail Kosenko was put in a psychiatric ward. He had been convicted of rioting and assaulting a police officer during a protest in 2012, according to The Guardian. Amnesty International called the admittance to a psychiatric ward a return to the Soviet-era practice of putting political dissidents in wards.

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Pavlensky was taken by police after cutting off his ear lobe and is said to be okay. He is expected to be discharged from the hospital shortly.

Pyotr Pavlensky posted the following statement to his wife's Facebook account:

"Armed with psychiatric diagnoses, the bureaucrat in a white lab coat cuts off from society those pieces that prevent him from establishing a monolithic dictate of a single, mandatory norm for everyone."

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