The psychiatric watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), says the capture of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will bring to justice a psychiatrist whose genocide of thousands was reminiscent of Nazi psychiatric crime during World War II, and that few people are aware that the "ethnic cleansing" — ridding a geographical area of racially "inferior" people-carried out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and later in Kosovo, was based on the same psychiatric-inspired racial hygiene programs that led to the Nazi Holocaust.
In 1992, CCHR formally submitted to the World Psychiatric Association, the World Federation for Mental Health and the Mental Health Division of the World Health Organization information concerning the psychiatric atrocities committed in the region formerly called
CCHR presented the same information about psychiatry’s role in initiating and conducting the “ethnic cleansing” atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
On September 1, 1999, members of the Council of Europe signed a Resolution, “Human suffering and degradation following ethnic cleansing,” that recognized the two psychiatrists as “the architects of the ethnic cleansing campaign” in
CCHR’s evidence showed that Karadzic had trained under former Social Democratic Party (SDP) founder, psychiatrist Jovan Raskovic. Before his death in 1992, Raskovic told
“I feel responsible because I made the preparations for this war, even if not the military preparations. If I hadn’t created this emotional strain in the Serbian people, nothing would have happened,” Raskovic stated.
Other evidence presented to
Brian Beaumont, president of the Vancouver chapter of CCHR , said justice can be served now that the architect of the Bosnian ethnic cleansing has been captured, unlike in Nazi Germany where dozens of psychiatrists responsible for sterilization and genocidal crimes escaped trial and returned to practice in Germany and other countries around the world.
CCHR International president, Jan Eastgate said, “Responsibility exists on all levels, and while the atrocities of ethnic cleansing and genocide are usually what capture our attention, it is important to recognize the ideology that spawns them and to hold those responsible for this to account.”
The Citizens Commission on Human Rights is an international psychiatric watchdog group co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights. Contact CCHR's Media Department at 800-869-2247 or humanrights@cchr.org.