Fixated Threat Assessment Centre

The UK government has established a secretive new police unit a la George Orwell with the powers to detain anyone for any length of time without any due process.

The shadowy unit called the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC) was covertly established in 2006. The unit includes the services of police psychiatrists. Why? For one very good reason, and one reason only: psychiatrists operate above the law. They can detain ANYONE AT ANY TIME AND FOR NO MORE REASON THAN THEIR STATED OPINION THAT THE PERSON MAY BE A DANGER TO THEMSELVES OR TO OTHERS.

Once forcibly detained by a psychiatrist a person can be legally locked away forever and subjected to despicable ‘treatments’ such as psychotropic drug regimes, lobotomies and electric shocking of the brain. They are not entitled to a trial of any sort, they need face no criminal charges.

A person incarcerated by a psychiatrist has no rights whatsoever. Even Stalin had to produce his prisoners in court eventually. The miserable occupants of Guantanamo retain the certainty that one day they will face justice, or at least that they will have their day in court; the occupants of psychiatric prisons have no such comfort.

It is a thin line that separates a rule of law democracy from a totalitarian dictatorship. The FTAC crosses that line. For many years our individual freedoms have been incrementally cut away. The FTAC rips the flesh off freedom and lays bare the bones of repression for all decent and honest people to see. The FTAC represents nothing less that the repeal of Habeas Corpus with its right of trial and its protection from arbitrary state detention.

A Writ of Habeas Corpus orders that a prisoner is to be brought before a court so that the court can then determine whether that person is serving a lawful sentence or should be released from custody. The prisoner, or someone acting on behalf of the prisoner if he/she is being held incommunicado can petition the court or an individual judge for a Writ of Habeas Corpus.

The justification for the extreme powers of FRAC is of course terrorism. Experience shows that the powers of the FTAC will be quickly exercised in a far wider sphere than even the most skeptical imagine. Once a law is enacted the very fact of its existence gives it respectability and thus acceptability.

For years society casually turned a blind eye to the total lack of Human Rights for anyone labeled ‘mentally ill’, never dreaming that the definition might one day be widened sufficiently to cover not only themselves, but everyone who may for any reason be deemed a threat by those in authority.

In the twenty-first century mental illness is presumed to be the normal circumstance and sanity deemed to exist only after ‘treatment’ by a psychiatrist.

We live in a nightmare world that is starting to exceed the imaginings of even George Orwell.