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May 2nd,
2008 is the tenth anniversary of the Verdict
of the Foucault Tribunal. This is a great opportunity to celebrate
this special anniversary because on the next day (May 3rd) in accordance
with the contractual rules, the UN-Disability
Convention will enter into force internationally. Thus ends the first
phase of applying this convention: 20 states must have ratified the convention
before it can become valid internationally. The fact that this goal has
been reached now is particularly opportune for us, because now there is
no more reason to promote a rapid ratification of the convention, rather
we can now concentrate on the fact that BEFORE the ratification in further
countries our demand for the abolishment of all mental health laws must
be fulfilled. Only by the fulfillment of these minimalistic defense rights
from torture-like psychiatric coercion treatment and arbitrary detention
in psychiatric prisons, can the Disability Convention not
become an additional shield of coercive psychiatry.
Without prior
consent to this demand, the convention and those ratifying it become a
caricature of the human rights which they pretend to strengthen, because
the fulfillment of economic, social and cultural rights has as a precondition
that the fundamental rights to liberty, in particular the abolishment
of torture (e.g. by means of psychiatric coercive treatment), is assured.
Even if,
by the use of the optional protocol, an attempt is made after the ratification
to prompt states to fulfill the convention, it is particularly necessary
with regard to psychiatric assault that the legislator abolishes the mental
health laws which legalise these crimes. If the legislator should refuse
our explicit demand to do this before the ratification, then there is
hardly any chance thereafter, since he obviously perceives the Disability
Convention only as an alibi anyway. That, in the 24
states which have ratified the convention in the meantime, there is
not the least sign of a loosening of the violent regime of coercive psychiatry,
is blatant proof of this.
Our demand
for abolishment of the mental health laws now - before a ratification
- is a great opportunity, which we celebrate with the Remembrance
& Resistance day. This celebration we link to a commemoration
of our ca. 300,000 sisters
and brothers systematically murdered by doctors in Germany, Poland
and Austria in 1939-1949 (see also here).
A slanderous diagnosis was their death sentence.
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