Recognising the need to restore historical justice in respect of persons subjected to repressions and to eliminate the adverse legal consequences affecting them, on Thursday, 19 March, the Saeima adopted a declaration condemning the use of repressive psychiatric methods in Latvia during the totalitarian communist occupation by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

In the declaration, the Saeima condemns the repressions carried out by the Soviet regime, including the attribution of fabricated psychiatric disorders, the detention of individuals, and their placement in psychiatric hospitals for political rather than mental‑health‑related reasons. Such actions restricted fundamental human rights and served as a means to persecute and punish opponents of the occupation regime.

This practice in occupied Latvia formed part of the broader system of repressive psychiatry that existed throughout the Soviet Union. Political opponents, dissidents, and human rights defenders were assigned fabricated psychiatric diagnoses and confined to psychiatric institutions.

International professional psychiatric organisations have noted that the diagnostic criteria for mental illness used in the Soviet Union differed substantially from internationally accepted medical standards and were applied for the purpose of political repression.

The Saeima recognises that persons placed in psychiatric institutions for political reasons between 17 June 1940 and 21 August 1991 are victims of repressions carried out by the occupation regime and have the right to rehabilitation and justice. Members of Parliament recognise these repressions as crimes and condemn the actions of all individuals involved in their implementation.

Members of Parliament also call on Latvia’s historical memory institutions, in cooperation with the Latvian professional psychiatric community, to conduct research and assessment of the occupation‑regime crimes related to repressive psychiatry and to inform the public of the results.

Saeima Press Service