Japan NGO-session at CAT-commitee

Today, Friday 17 May 2013, was the last day of our busy working week. We were at 9 AM at Palais Wilson again, where we had a meeting with Mr Marino, member of the CAT-committee and also of CPT, and he is one of the rapporteurs on Japan (making the CAT-report). Mari explained him what the terrible situation in Japanese mental health care is, and Yoshi helped. Mr. Marino listened very carefully and asked some clarifying questions. It was good to see there was serious attention for this.

Then we had an hour to prepare a summarizing text, with some questions and recommendations. This was almost finished when we were joined by Thanda Thanda, the OHCHR desk officer on Japan. Mari and Yoshi had a private meeting with her, while Vicky and I took care of finalizing the text by adding data from the shadow-report and so on.

At 12.00 the NGO session on Japan took place. There was a huge amount of NGO’s that had made submissions (11), so each NGO had only 2 minutes to present a statement. Mari and Yoshi had prepared a written speech, addressing the issues.
Mari Yamamoto was the first one to speak.

Thank you, chairman.
I am Mari Yamamoto, and a member of Japan National Group of Mentally Disabled People and a user of psychiatry.
In Japan many people are locked up and subject to restraint or solitary confinement for long time. The number of forced hospitalization, restraint and solitary confinement are increasing.
There is no effective measure to prevent forced hospitalization, restraint, or solitary confinement because the government does not recognize that these are ill treatment or torture.
Now the government proposed the bill of mental health law reform that makes forced hospitalization easier.
We need to abolish mental health law or other legislation that imposes forced hospitalization and medical treatments on people.
And we need effective measure to release locked up people in mental hospitals with compensation and guarantee community living.
We have no patients’ right legislation and no items to define free and informed consent in any legislation. There are no items of forced treatments or the right to refuse treatments in mental health law but forced medical treatments or medical treatments without informed consent are common practice in Japan. There is no recognition that medical treatments without consent are ill treatments or torture.
We need comprehensive patients’ right legislation.
We need national human rights institution according to Paris principle. The NHRI in bill introduced by the government was not independent from the government.
And also we need to ratify OPCAT.
Thank you for your attention.

Then there were many other contributions on several issues, such as death penalty, coercive confessions and assaults in prisons, pre-trial-detention, immigration-detention and deportation, compensation for sexual abuse of Korean women as sex-slaves for the military, the laws on abortion which demand for spouses consent, discrimination against LGBT-people, mental health care on death-row, and how the appeal against death penalty in several cases is not exhausted. Some of the issues were doubled in other submissions.
There was also one rather strange submission from Japan Airlines, about a dispute around forcibly dismissed crew-members in 2010 (to be honest we all thought: is that torture?)

It was extremely special to see that almost all of the questions were about mental health care: What type of restraints are used? Are there any safeguards? Are there time-limits or options to appeal? What is the procedure for institutionalization? What are the reasons for forced hospitalization? Is there a structural review of these decisions? Is there a difference between voluntary and involuntary (can voluntary patients leave?). How many persons are involuntary detained? Is there any monitoring in mental health care in Japan?
There were only a few other questions on pre-trial-detention, gender- and LGBT-based violence, and death penalty. The majority of the time was dedicated to mental health care. It was the first time that the voice of Japanese users/survivors was heard by the CAT-committee, and it was clear that the seriousness of the issues had come across.

Directly after the meeting, we approached Mr. Tugushi, who is the other CAT-rapporteur on Japan, and we offered him to meet in private to clarify his questions. He offered to stay in the room to have a meeting with him, which we very much appreciated. He showed his interest and dedication, and Mari and Yoshi clarified more on the terrible practices in Japanese mental health care, by which many many thousands of persons are harmed. It seemed that Mr. Tugushi understood the issues Mari and Yoshi raised.

After this meeting we felt very good of course. This was more than we had expected. It felt like the mission was accomplished. The message was heard. Mari and Yoshi had performed a great piece of work. Their speech was the most touching of all, and the amount of suffering in Japanese mental health care outranked any other topic, even death penalty which doesn’t happen on a large scale in Japan but still is a very serious issue of course.

During the lunch we had this kind of unbelievable feeling. The issue of mental health care seemed to have landed. It was taken very serious. It was even called “an urgent issue”. Mari, Yoshi, Vicky and I had formed a good team, and it seemed to have worked. We can now only provide the additional clarifying information that we promised to send, and then wait for the Concluding Observations. But the attention that is given to the issues of mental health care by the CAT-committee gives us hope.

We walked out of Palais Wilson, feeling very proud.

In the afternoon we went on a boat across the lake, and site seeing in the old town of Geneva, and we carried a golden glow with us. I guess this week we did the maximum we could do. And I can’t help it, but I get emotional with happy tears, when I think about what might be the bright future. Our dream of equal human rights for users and survivors of psychiatry is coming closer. And it means so much to be recognized in the struggle and the pain. It feels as if this is launching a real healing process. We have hope. Very big hope.

In the evening we had a very nice dinner in the restaurant of the hotel (Ambassador – New Midi). It was actually one of the best meals I ever ate. And we had such a good time together. Mari, Yoshi and I have become very close friends during the past week. And we have been making plans for follow up meetings.
It’s actually a pity that I have to leave back to the Netherlands tomorrow afternoon. I wouldn’t have mind staying here with them longer. But that’s not possible. But I’m pretty sure we will meet again.
This week was one of those weeks that I will never forget.