MDAC Stop Torture Appeal 2013
Dear friend of MDAC,
Please invest in MDAC to challenge torture and ill-treatment
Today is UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. I’m inviting you to donate to MDAC so that we can help prevent people with intellectual and psycho-social disabilities experiencing ill-treatment.
Today we’re finishing up a 3-day training seminar for lawyers from Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Moldova. The training was funded by the UN Voluntary Fund for Victims of Torture who gave us $7,500 to run the seminar. Since Monday we’ve been exchanging ideas about how lawyers can build up a test case strategy to help eradicate, through the courts, ill-treatment against people with disabilities.
I’ve been privileged to travel to around fifteen countries over the last decade for MDAC. I remember in 2003 how I saw seven women in a Slovak social care institution. Each was naked and each was in a cage bed. These devices are now banned in these institutions.
In many countries I’ve seen people strapped with leather belts to hospital beds. I’ve talked to people who have explained to me, through the haze of over-medication, how they feel like zombies and want to get out of the hospital. I’ve seen bruises on people’s faces and hands as they’ve told me how nurses threw them on a bed and injected them, knocking them out for two days (read more about this on my OliverTalks post on Moldova). I’ve seen how food is slopped into metal bowls where they eat with their hands and heard from women that their hair is dry because the food doesn’t contain enough nutrients. I’ve talked to people who have been subjected to sexual abuse. I’ve seen physical violence being metered out. I’ve seen people close to death due to basic healthcare being denied.
In so many countries there aren’t any effective inspectorates of institutions, no lawyers taking these cases or parliamentarians asking questions to government. Despite this, these human rights abuses are now coming to light. Recently, with our partner organisations, we’ve been successful in highlighting at the European Court of Human Rights some of these instances of ill-treatment:
Rusi Stanev spent eight years detained in a social care institution 400km away from his home. He was forced to live in grotesque conditions where the uniforms were communal, the heating inadequate and the food barely edible. We co-represented him and he won his case at the European Court.
We submitted a ‘third party intervention’ in the case of ZH v. Hungary where a deaf young man with intellectual disabilities was imprisoned. The prison treated him like any other prisoner, which meant that he was made vulnerable to ill-treatment and abuse. He won his case at the European Court.
Lukáš Bures is a young cellist from the Czech Republic. After accidentally overdosing on his mental health medication he was taken to a sobering-up centre. He presented no danger and was immediately strapped with belts to a bed for three hours. This resulted in abrasions on his neck, and both ankles and wrists – particularly serious given he was a cellist. We co-represented him and he won his case at the European Court.
Strategic litigation is often the first step in documenting abuses. But now we need funds to carry out advocacy to make sure people are not subjected to this kind of abuse in the future. We need funds to challenge other areas of ill-treatment, in particular the imposition of forced psychiatric treatment, isolation and seclusion, and sexual abuse.
Please help us to bring these cases by making a secure credit card donation today.
I’d love to speak to you if you can help us play a watchdog role in holding governments to account for their international human rights commitments. Do get in touch with me via email - support@mdac.org.
Thank you for your support.
Best wishes,
Oliver Lewis
Executive Director