LOUHE, China, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- Human rights officials say China routinely sends people to mental hospitals if they cause too many problems for the government.
In one case, a man spent more than six years in two different mental institutions after filing a series of complaints against the government in a land dispute, The New York Times reported.
"The police know that to arbitrarily detain someone is illegal. They have to worry about that now," said Huang Xuetao, a lawyer in Shenzhen, in Guangdong province. "But officials have discovered this big hole in the psychiatric system, and they are increasingly taking advantage of it."
The problem is compounded because the government is squandering money that should be spent on people who actually need mental health interventions, said Huang, who specializes in mental health law.
Huang said she and a colleague examined 300 news reports involving people who were hospitalized for mental illness and others who weren't.
"Those who needed to be treated were not, and those who should not have been treated were treated and guarded," their study concluded.
Liu Feiyue, founder of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, a Chinese human-rights organization, said his group has a database of more than 200 Chinese citizens wrongly committed to mental institutions after filing complaints against the government.
