[Archive] - Petition United Nations (human rights in mental health)

Petitions Team

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

United Nations Office at Geneva

1211 Geneva 10, Switserland

+41229179022

Subject : Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment – Complaint to CAT

Dear High Commissioner,

I am very concerned about the situation in a hospital in my city Antwerp. In a clinic for people in a psychic crisis, people often get locked up against their wills for reasons that are negligible in little cells. Afters years of volunteering in health care, I know that there are other, more human ways of treating people.The mystery that I have seen in that hospital is definitely degrading for human dignity and often the reason of trauma after the experience for those patients who have to go through it, mentally it equals torture, for many overthere.

I ask your office to investigate that clinic and to please ask them gently to respect human rights and find other, better ways of dealing with persons in severe crisis, without harming these patients psychically by locking them up against there wills. In the end the goal of a clinic is to make people better, not worse. The way things are at this very moment is a real threat for human rights and human dignity for all people on these particular floors.

The clinic and floors where cruel treatments take place at floor X1 and floor X2 in the following hospital :

ZNA Psychiatrisch Ziekenhuis Stuivenberg
Lange Beeldekensstraat 267
2060 Antwerpen
België / Belgium

I thank you for your attention, for a better world and better conditions for humanity.