PER:Soviet Psychiatric Abuses Revealed

   BIBLE IN THE NEWS October 1987

   Physical torture coupled with mental torture make the most devilish
combination possible for the mistreatment of human beings. Revelations
of Soviet psychiatric abuses by a recently released Soviet psychiatrist
show what goes on secretly within the iron curtain and warn those in
the United States against such things here. Even now the charge of
mental illness is used sometimes inappropriately, as in certain charges
of child abuse, or in the case, years ago, of General Edwin Walker, who
was arrested and placed in a federal psychiatric facility without
hearing, as the result of a news report. We must pray and act to insure
that America is free from mental abuse.

   DOCUMENTATION: Milwaukee Journal, May 14, 1987, Washington Post
Service

   CHICAGO, IL - Soviet psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin, telling of
physical torture, mental abuse, and two years of hunger strikes, gave
the first detailed account...of his six years in Soviet confinement.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association,
Koryagin gave a harrowing account of his struggle for physical and
psychological freedom....Force-fed during his hunger strike, Koryagin
said a plastic tube lubricated with a painful corrosive...was inserted
through his nose and into his stomach. He said prison doctors
administered powerful psychotropic drugs while force-feeding
him....Koryagin, 48, was imprisoned...after he went public about
numerous cases of psychiatric confinement of political dissidents, many
of whom he found to be sane....Koryagin said he personally knew of 183
political activists detained...and added, "The total is much larger, of
course." ...Under "Glasnost" reforms, Koryagin said no dissident had
been released from any psychiatric ward. "The abuse of psychiatry
continues to be part of repressions of the KGB, " he declared...."At a
time I was so weak I couldn't get out of bed, they would turn on a
faucet nearby, " he said...."The noise was like Niagara Falls.
Sometimes they would let it run for one or two hours, sometimes for 24
hours and sometimes for up to three days." He said guards frequently
turned radios to full volume for days at a time....After his first
hunger strike ..his wife...was permitted to visit him for the first
time. "Right in front of my jailers, I was told I had been elected as
honorary member of the American Psychiatric Association, " he said.
"This gave me enormous strength."

   In these times of evolutionary humanism and anti- Christian public
policy, Christians must strengthen their resolve. Outright oppression
is a very likely future for Christianity in America. However, we have
the strength of God's word for such occasions. As Paul, the prisoner of
Jesus Christ for the Gentiles, records in Phillipians 1:28-30: "And in
nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is to them an evident
token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God. For unto
you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him but
also to suffer for his sake; having the same conflict which ye saw in
me, and now hear to be in me." How marvelous are His works!

   The Southwest Radio Church
