Kazakh lawyer faces psychiatric assessment

A Kazakh lawyer has been subjected to enforced psychiatric treatment for the second time in two years after lodging complaints against a regional governor.

Human rights issues Yui

Zinaida Mukhortova was forced into nine months of psychiatric treatment in 2012, after she made the complaints. She was hospitalised on 9 August  this year and is being  held with 60 patients in a clinic in the town of Balkhash in central Kazakhstan. She says, according to Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty that 'she is mentally healthy and that the legal actions against her are politically motivated'. The doctors say that she is suffering from delusions - but Human Rights Watch has been calling for her release. She has been told that she must go through a psychiatric assessment before a decision can be made as to whether she will be released. 

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