LONDON: Vladimir Bukovsky, a prominent dissident and writer who helped expose the Soviet Union’s abuse of psychiatry to silence critics, has died in Britain aged 76. By the age of 35, Bukovsky had spent 12 years in Soviet prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals as a dissident who openly opposed the regime. “The Soviet authorities used to call Bukovsky a hooligan involved in anti-Soviet activities,” top rights group Memorial said on Twitter. Authorities declared him mentally ill and put him in a psychiatric hospital. In 1971, he managed to have psychiatric hospital records for six dissidents smuggled to the West, creating an uproar.

Source: Pakistan Today October 28, 2019 12:33 UTC