RACHEL GERARDI: Thank you
everyone, for being here today.

My name is Rachel Gerardi.

I'm the co-director of the
Disabled Student Cultural

Center.

We're partnering today with
the University of Minnesota

Program in Human
Rights and Health.

Minnesota advocates for Human
Rights and the U of M Human

Rights Minor Program
to bring you,

Eric Rosenthal from Mental
Disability Rights International.

Mental Disability
Rights International,

MDRI promotes human rights
and full participation

in society for people with
mental and physical disabilities

worldwide.

It was founded in
1993 by Eric Rosenthal

and works investigating
human rights abuses

against people with disabilities
in different countries.

They've compiled many country
reports on conditions of people

with disabilities
in institutions

where exclusion is just
absolutely terrible.

And they also received the
2009 Human Rights Award

from the American
Psychiatric Association.

For those of you who are
joining us via webcast,

to ask a question,
please use the chat box.

A podcast of this
presentation will

be available on the School
of Public Health and Program,

and Human Rights
and Health websites.

If you wish to ask a
question anonymously,

please feel free to write it
on the card or a slip of paper

otherwise, permission
to broadcast is implied.

Thank you everyone, and
let's give a warm welcome

for Eric Rosenthal.

[APPLAUSE]

ERIC ROSENTHAL:
Well, thank you very,

very much for inviting me here.

Thanks to the Disabled Student
Cultural Center and the program

in Human Rights and Health.

I have a special soft
spot for Minnesota.

I started my human rights career
here right out of law school.

The Minnesota Advocates
for Human Rights

gave me a one year
legal fellowship,

and that's the only job I ever
had, other than the organization

that I founded thereafter to
do international human rights

for people with disabilities.

So I'm going to give this talk
in a somewhat autobiographical

way to tell you how I went
from Minnesota onwards

to create this organization and
do advocacy under the new UN

Convention on the rights of
people with disabilities.

The convention that we'll
be talking about was opened

for signature just
two years ago,

and then one year ago entered
into fourths when the 20th

country ratified it.

It's now been ratified by more
than 50 countries, including

Germany, Spain.

The European Commission
has signed it

on behalf of all of Europe.

The pace of change is enormous.

We're really at an incredibly,
incredibly exciting time.

When I started this work
after leaving Minnesota

about 15 years ago, the rights
of people with disabilities

had been entirely overlooked by
the International Human Rights

community.

There were specialized
conventions

on the rights of children.

There was a
specialized convention

on the rights of women,
immigrants, laborers.

And yet this was an
enormous, vulnerable group

subject to discrimination
and abuse worldwide,

and yet there was complete
ignorance about this field.

As a law student, actually,
I had a background

doing some disability rights
work in the United States,

but when I was in
law school, I looked

into the international
human rights of people

with disabilities.

I figured having done this work
in the Civil Rights Movement

here in the United States, that
there must be something on it

somewhere.

This was back in the early
1990s, not too long ago.

And when I did a search back in
the early 1990s on human rights,

and my particular area where I
started out was in mental health

and looked at the rights
of psychiatric patients.

And when you did
searches back then

on human rights
and mental health,

there were reams of
reports and activism

around the placing of
political dissidents

in the Soviet
psychiatric hospitals.

And so I went and I
looked at those reports,

and there was this very eerie
quality to those reports,

because they would describe
these 1,000 bed psychiatric

facilities.

And you're going
to see in the video

that I'm showing
big rooms of 80 beds

together where they would
talk about how horrible it was

that these dissidents were
placed in these facilities

where they could rarely
get out for light and air,

and they were forced to take
these horrible psychotropic

drugs.

And it seemed as though the
worst horrible thing about it

is they had to be locked up
with psychiatric patients.

And yet the idea that the
psychiatric patients themselves

might have some rights, that
there might have to be some due

process before a psychiatrist
or a family member

could put away a
person for a lifetime

seemed to be entirely absent.

So you'd have 1,000 bed facility
and maybe one or two dissidents

in that facility.

And the reports by Amnesty
International and the US State

Department sent
an investigation,

and the World
Psychiatric Association

were about the dissidents.

And it was as if the
people with disabilities,

the people with
psychiatric diagnoses

they were blind as if
they weren't even there.

Their rights just
simply did not exist.

And yet, as an
activist and someone

who had studied the process
of mental health reform

in the United States and
worked for civil rights

just a year before, I was
working on an impact litigation

case, about closing our
institutions in the United

States.

We had 1,000 bed facilities
that were strikingly similar.

And yet for 20 or 30 years,
the Civil Rights Movement

had been fighting against
locking people up, throwing away

the key and letting
them language

in these very same institutions.

And yet somehow it
was entirely left off

the international spectrum.

I came to Minnesota,
and when I was

working for Minnesota
Advocates for Human Rights,

they had a project on Mexico.

So I went down to Mexico
and we were doing work

on the rights of
Indigenous people,

and I remember we scooped the
international human rights

community because we were down
in Chiapas before the uprising,

and we had unfortunately
discovered these villages

where the military in Chiapas
had been burning down villages.

And I went in and I interviewed
these very poor Indigenous

people who had lost their homes.

It was a heartbreaking
thing to see.

And we had that report shortly
before the uprising happened.

On my way back from Chiapas,
I stopped in Mexico City

and I happened to talk
to a friend, actually

a friend who went on to a
great human rights career,

but then was working as my
interpreter about my interest

in mental health
and human rights.

And I was telling her
about this research,

and I wanted to do something.

And she said, well,
it just so happens

that there's an activist here
in Mexico City who's been trying

to bring these issues to light.

I was supposed to leave for
the airport the next day

at around noon.

I said, oh, I don't have time.

I don't know if you know Mexico
City is a big, sprawling city,

but this incredible activist
got on the telephone and said,

oh, you must come.

Wake up early in the morning.

We'll race over to these
psychiatric hospitals.

I narrowly missed
my plane, but it

was one of those fortuitous
events in your life

where the fact that I
took this morning and went

to view the psychiatric
hospital in Mexico City,

one of the absolutely
most shocking

and horrifying
experiences of my life.

A big it was way out of
the city in an open field.

There had been an
idea 100 years ago

that it was going to be for
the health and rehabilitation

of psychiatric patients,
get them some fresh air,

get them in active work,
farming, an idea that we also

had in the United States when
we built some of the big state

psychiatric facilities out
in the middle of nowhere.

But ultimately, what
these facilities

did, was they isolated people
from the rest of the population.

And these great concepts of
giving them meaningful work

quickly slipped by the wayside.

There was a facility
with barbed wire fences

around it, dirt fields
and these open buildings.

And literally behind
the barbed wire

fences were dozens of
people held entirely naked.

And I remember I arrived at
feeding time, not breakfast, not

lunch, but feeding time.

And they brought a
large tray of food in,

and the people all lunged for
it hungrily and grabbed it.

It was as if it was a zoo.

They were totally and
absolutely dehumanized.

And I remember interviewing
one of the psychiatrists.

I asked him, "Why don't you
at least give these people

clothing."

And unbelievably, what he
told me was that it's--

first of all, the
practical reason

it was easier to hose
them down without clothing

and they were covered
in their own shit.

The people were living in
terrible circumstances,

so without closing, it was
easier to hose them down.

But they also said "We don't
want to get people's hopes up

that they might someday
return to society."

The idea that hope itself was
dangerous for these people

that they might ever
return to humanity.

So they came, they were
stripped of their clothing,

they was placed in this
animal-like environment.

The most horrible
thing I had ever seen.

I came back to
the United States,

and shortly after I came
back, the Chiapas situation

exploded, went
over all the press.

There was an
uprising in Chiapas,

and every other human rights
organization sent their missions

down to Chiapas.

And I sat there thinking it
was this strange feeling.

Every other human rights
group is going down to Chiapas

to find out what is
happening in Southern Mexico,

to the Indigenous people
whose homes were burned down

by the military.

And I was thinking
of the people who

I interviewed who
were displaced,

who had lost their homes.

Those people wore clothing.

They had a Bible or a book or
a photograph of a loved one

that they had taken with them.

They had names, not numbers.

They had a shred of humanity.

The people who were
considered the most

vulnerable by the International
Human Rights community

were doing so much better
than the psychiatric patients

in Mexico City.

And yet it never occurred
to a single psychiatric,

and it never occurred to a
single human rights organization

ever to go in and
see what was going on

at those psychiatric facilities.

I went to Amnesty International,
I went to Human Rights Watch,

I went to the big groups.

I said, you've got to
do something about this.

They simply didn't understand
what the problem was.

I'm going to be talking
today afterwards

about what it is that the
international-- the new

convention does not just
making sure that this issue is

on the table, but
pushing forward

what the rights are of
people with disabilities.

But before that, I'm going
to show a little video that

was done that describes
the work that we do,

that gives you a little
picture of the work

that my organization has done.

I've now been at
this for 15 years,

and we've done investigations
in 23 different countries

and brought international press
and the methodology that we do.

And I'm going to start
there, and then we

can talk about how
much further we're

able to get under
the convention.

But I want to bring you
inside the doors of some

of these psychiatric
facilities and orphanages

to see one small piece
of the worldwide problem

that people with disabilities
are facing everywhere.

If it's possible to
turn the lights down,

it's a much more powerful
video with the lights down.

Thank you.

[AUDIO PLAYBACK]

- I've seen children sticking
their fingers in their eye,

scratching themselves and
you can see bloody tracks

where they've scratched
their skin raw.

And that is because they
just have no stimulation,

and any form of
feeling becomes better

than the nothingness
that's the institution.

- This video reveals
the human rights abuses

that go unchecked in psychiatric
institutions, orphanages,

and mental retardation
facilities around the world.

Eric Rosenthal, the director
of Mental Disability Rights

International or MDRI, has
conducted investigations

in Mexico, Uruguay, Armenia,
Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine,

Hungary, and the
former Yugoslavia.

He sees recurring problems of
cruel and degrading treatment

and adequate attention
and inappropriate

institutionalization.

- The truth is, most
institutions around the world

have more similarities
than differences.

So what we captured
in Mexico was not

that much different from what I
saw in Romania, Hungary, Russia,

Ukraine.

Rows of beds, totally sterile.

These places where people live
for the rest of their life

and absolutely no sense of
individuality whatsoever.

One of the hardest things to
communicate in a written report

is the abuse of locking up
a person in a sterile room

and having them sit
there, do nothing.

- Article 7 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political

Rights states that
no one shall be

subjected to torture or cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment.

- What does that mean in
the context of a person

with a psychiatric disability?

It means being
locked up in a cage.

It means being locked up
to rot in your own filth.

It means being totally
lacking in any form

of privacy or dignity.

- In many of the institutions
that MDRI visits,

there is no privacy.

Every room is communal.

The clothes are shared,
the bathrooms are filthy.

Puddles of urine dirt the
floors and the conditions

are utterly dehumanizing.

[GENTLE MELODY]

- There are five
cups for 99 patients.

- 99 patients, including some of
the women who had urinated over

here and had not had a chance
to go to a bathroom since then,

some of whom have been
walking in it, sitting in it.

- Most of these institutions
are severely understaffed

and overflowing with people.

Medical attention is
often inappropriate

or hopelessly inadequate.

A shockingly common
problem is self-abuse.

Children and adults
starved of stimulation

hurt themselves to feel
something, anything.

So staff respond by tying
them down for hours on end.

In one institution in
Mexico, MDRI investigators

came across a child strapped
down in a wheelchair

with sheets wrapped
around his body.

- Now they're tying it under--
they're putting the restraints

under the mattress
there, the restraint.

- They've just taken the
restraints off the child--

- Right.

- And put it under the mattress.

- Staff do not have
time to tend to people

or to give them
the care they need.

- This man has been running
up and down this hall

for the last half
an hour, naked,

and no one seems to be
taking any notice of him.

- At stake is not just a
patient's immediate welfare,

but their long-term condition.

For young children,
starving them of attention

will have lifelong consequences.

- This little kid--

some needed human contact.

Just look at the littlest
contact he responds to.

And he's just got so much
energy and he's walking around.

- Activists like Eric Rosenthal
see community integration

as the answer to many
of these problems.

For legal precedent, he turns
to the 1991 UN Principles

for the Protection of
Persons With Mental Illness,

which state that every
person with mental illness

shall have the right
to live and work

to the extent possible
in the community.

Authorities admit
that people are

detained in institutions because
they have nowhere else to go.

Once they are admitted, it
is often hard for patients

to leave, whether they
are fit to or not.

The legal mechanisms to protect
against arbitrary detention

do not exist, or there
may be nowhere and no one

to release them to.

According to the director
at one Mexican institution,

80% of the people detained
did not need to be there.

Faced with tremendous
stigma and discrimination

and no supportive
care in the community,

the burden of caring for
people with mental disabilities

is often left to the family.

When they cannot cope and feel
they have no choice but to place

a relative in an institution,
they are often blamed by medical

authorities.

In Mexico, people placed in
institutions by family members

are called [SPANISH TERM]
In this unit

there were 15 [SPANISH TERM]

- Of the 15, 12 have
been in condition

to be discharged for
four years and the rest

have been in condition
for six months.

- I see.

And is it difficult to
find their families?

[SPEAKING SPANISH]

- It's difficult as the families
are clever and normally don't

leave their real address when
they bring them for admission.

And then the emotional
bonds weaken over time.

The close family members,
like parents and siblings,

start disappearing.

And only more distant
relatives remain,

who definitely don't want
to take responsibility

for their patients.

In countries of the
former Soviet Union,

family members have
reported to MDRI

that doctors told them to give
up a disabled child immediately

after birth so they would not
become too attached to the baby.

Many families are
heartbroken by the pressure

to give up their child
and would do anything

to keep them at home.

- These are children that
are waiting for placement.

The family takes them to
a different psychiatrists

specialists to see if there's
any hope they can do anything

with them within their
homes, and then they

are recommended to be taken
to different institutions.

And the second level
is that socially,

they're not able to have a
specialist come to their homes

to take care of them.

That's why they bring the
children to our institutions.

- In addition to
documenting abuses,

MDRI works closely
with activists

who are working to challenge
discrimination and reform

laws in their own countries.

- I think it is
extremely important--

- Gabor Gombos is a
Hungarian physicist

who founded the Voice of Soul--

an advocacy organization made
up of psychiatric survivors.

- Then they feel that
we are not alone.

We can share knowledge
and expertise

about techniques, how we
can influence legislation,

how we can improve
human rights conditions.

[INDISTINCT CHATTERS]

- MDRI is fighting for the day
when mental disability rights

are an accepted part of the
international human rights

agenda.

One significant step
in the right direction

was taken in March 2000,
when MDRI presented

the findings of its
report on abuses

in Mexico's
psychiatric facilities

to the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights.

As a consequence,
for the first time

ever, the next annual
report of the Commission

on Mexico's human
rights record raises

concerns about conditions in
psychiatric facilities there.

Shortly after these
public hearings,

Mexico declared
that it would close

one of the most
abusive institutions.

For mental disability
activists, it's

another step on the road
to widespread recognition

of some long-ignored
basic human rights.

For further
information on what you

can do to help the cause
of people and institutions

around the world, contact MDRI.

[END PLAYBACK]

ERIC ROSENTHAL: That video was
made about eight years ago.

So as I said, there
are some changes

that have happened legally.

But I'm sorry to
say that in terms

of what is going on in the
institutions for children

and adults around the world,
the vast majority of countries

have institutions very
similar to what we've seen.

In almost every part of the
world that we've visited,

those kinds of abuses
are taking place.

And they're taking place
on a very large scale.

I would submit to
you that in terms

of a population subject to very
extreme human rights abuses,

people with disabilities
are right up there

as perhaps the greatest
overlooked human rights

problem in the world today.

And hopeful though, I am about
this disability convention,

the challenge is enormous
to ending these abuses.

Before I go on, are there
thoughts or questions

about the video or
anything that you've seen?

Let's take a minute.

And this kind of horrifying
stuff that you saw.

If you have any questions.

Yes.

AUDIENCE: How easily
were you able to get

into the institutions yourself
with the video camera?

Were there any laws
against anything?

ERIC ROSENTHAL: Yeah, that's a
very, very interesting question.

We have had a surprisingly
easy time getting access

to institutions all around
the world up to now.

It's getting harder.

And the reason is because
most service providers

in most countries have no
concept that anything could be

different than the way it is.

They certainly don't know
that the rights of patients

are being violated.

They don't have anything to
be ashamed of because this

is what they think--

oh, well you're disabled.

Of course, you're
living in filth.

I remember when I started this
work, one of the first countries

I did work in was Hungary.

Hungary is in the
center of Europe,

a very sophisticated country
with a highly professional

mental health profession.

It's a member of NATO
and the European Union.

And I recall meeting with
psychiatrists in Budapest,

first of all, who had
no idea that there

were psychiatric facilities
out in the remote parts

of the countries.

They were actually
called social care homes.

We go to the social care homes.

And in the social care
homes, the behavior problems

or the people with
mental illness

are treated horrendously.

And I remember I was
visiting in December

and it was getting dark outside.

It was about four
o'clock in the afternoon

and it started
getting dark outside.

We walked into a run room.

It was completely dark.

The nurse flicked on
the lights and there

was a room full of cages and
lines and lines of people

in-- there was actually
a picture of it.

You're in a bed with a
cage built over the bed.

So if you're there for 10
minutes, it's not so bad.

But if you realize you
can never stand up,

you can't get out to
go to the bathroom.

You're literally-- they
put a bedpan in there.

That's inevitably
got knocked over.

She flicked on the
lights and said,

here are the behavior problems.

And the light woke them up.

And then she flicked off
the lights and let's go.

And I said to her--

she wasn't trying to hide it.

I said, why are these
people sitting in cages?

And she said, well, they're
there for their own protection.

Because there are 90
people in this building.

And we only have two nurses
and we can't protect them.

So they weren't trying
to hide anything

because they had no clue that
locking people up in cages

was wrong.

The more successful we are
at exposing these abuses,

and the more the awareness hits,
and the more the human rights

convention takes hold
and countries develop

legal protections, it's
actually getting a lot harder.

I've never done work
undercover myself.

What we've done is we've
gone into institutions

and they will very often
not let the press in.

So we will go in, find
out where the abuses are,

and then tell the press.

And ABC News went into
those Mexican institutions

and did an exposé
with hidden cameras.

After we did our report
on Serbia last year,

Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of
York, called us up and said,

I want to go see an orphanage
and do something about it.

And so the Turkish government
wouldn't let her in with us.

So she and a British
television crew

went into one of the
orphanages that we

had identified as being abusive,
and they went in undercover.

And I have to say, much
as we had had access.

And when you go in
not being undercover,

there's only so much they
can clean up a place.

They know you're coming.

They scrub the walls,
they clean the sheets.

But it's so horrendous.

The self-abuse that you
see, the people tied down.

There's nothing that
they can do about that

quickly to clean it up.

But when the Duchess of
York went in undercover

into the same facility
that we've seen,

it was one cut worse.

I mean, it's horrifying to
see how things really are when

they don't know you're coming.

I mean, lots of kids
literally walking around

with their hands tied
behind their back,

just wandering around
in this facility.

A little child in a box.

So access is a very big issue.

Institutions tend
to say you can't

video because we're protecting
the privacy of the patients.

What does it mean to protect
the privacy when you're

torturing them and tying
them down and leaving them

in a place where there's
horrible infectious disease

and they might die?

And this is a methodological
problem as human rights

activists that we face.

How do we get video when there
is no ability to get permission?

The legal capacity of the
individuals to make decisions

is not recognized.

The institution makes
all their decisions,

and the institutions say, oh,
we're protecting their privacy.

So we take our video
without permission

because it is our only
way of exposing what we

consider to be greater abuses.

As you see in most of those
videos, when we take them,

people rush forward.

They want to be videoed,
whether they just

want to be in a picture or
they want the world to know

what's going on.

For the most part,
it's not something

that we're doing
against their will.

But access is very
much an issue.

We're now trying to do a
project in the United States,

and this methodology
affirmatively

does not work in the United
States because of the liability

issues.

We can't take the video
without permission here.

Any other questions?