One of the most appalling things about the Soviet Union was their equation of dissent with mental illness. Communism was the rational solution to the problems of mankind, and so anyone disagreeing with the government must therefore be irrational or deluded. Dissent was therefore a sickness, and dissidents were frequently involuntarily confined to mental institutions for "treatment".
It's still going on in Uzbekistan. Below is a cartoon distributed at a protest in Uzbekistan. It mocks government corruption by depicting well-known members of the Uzbek regime "sucking at the teat of the state".
The author, Yelena Urlayeva, was arrested. She is now being held in a mental hospital, and claims to have been beaten for refusing to declare she is mentally ill.
Uzbekistan doesn't have an embassy here, so there's nowhere to protest at, but if you'd like to voice your disquiet, Human Rights First has an online form here.
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