Russian Activist Says Clinic Staff Tried To Kill Her

An undated photo of opposition activist Larisa Arap (left) and a photo taken by her daughter at the psychiatric hospital where she was held (Courtesy Photo)

August 21, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- A journalist and opposition activist who
was forcibly hospitalized in a Russian psychiatric clinic is claiming
that she was beaten, drugged, and an attempt was made on her life
during her internment.

Larisa Arap was released on August 20 after being held for 46 days against her will in a psychiatric clinic near the northern Russian city of Murmansk.

"When the police and the doctors brought me, I was very severely beaten by medical staff in the reception area. Then they bound me, after making me strip naked in front of male patients," she said in an interview with RFE/RL's Russian Service on the day of her release.

"There was an attempt to kill me," she added. "I was injected with a strong soporific, and I woke up because someone was pulling off me a woman who was suffocating me with a pillow. They put pills into my mouth, forced me to swallow them, and then checked my mouth."

Return To Soviet Methods?

The 48-year-old Arap, who is a member of an opposition group led by former chess champion Garry Kasparov, says her forced internment was retribution for an article in which she denounced abuse against young patients at another local mental institution.

She was released after a commission sent by Russia's human-rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, concluded that her detention was unfounded.

Arap's case has raised an international outcry. Reporters Without Borders joined Russian human-rights activists in comparing Arap's case to the Soviet practice of interning dissidents in psychiatric clinics.

A Murmansk court is due on August 22 to examine an appeal filed by Arap's family. But the appeal may be hampered by a declaration that Arap claims clinic staffers forced her to sign.

"I was forced to sign a declaration in which I agree that I am being treated voluntarily," she said. "I refused, after which I was asked to sign another declaration requesting to be released but pledge to get outpatient psychiatric treatment. There was no other solution than to write this declaration. They wouldn't have let me go otherwise."