Rights & Wrongs: Break the Chains

Ngofeen Mputubwle: Pretend we're with you there and our eyes are closed. What are we gonna hear? 

Elizabeth Kamundia: Hmm. So it's, it's like k-ching k-ching ching and it's, um... You have to first imagine the smell of it, right. Often they're tied four people to a pole. 

Kriti Sharma: Apart from, you know, someone giving you food off and on, you can be exposed to the elements outside sun, rain, storms... 

Kamundia: It's a combined space that is also the toilet. So just the smell of it is suffocating. They go weeks without a shower. 

Kriti: They can also have their muscles atrophy, which means the muscle separates from the bone because it's not being used. 

Kamundia: So even the sound of chains sometimes is not a sound that you hear because so restrained are the people in these spaces. 

Kriti: They can't stand up, walk, move around because they're constantly in one position. 

Kamundia: And then sometimes, of course, in other places you will hear people walking and it's ching, K- ching, K-ching. 

Host: That's what it sounds like. That's what it smells like. But when you see images of human bodies in these conditions, chained to poles, locked into tiny rooms, it looks like . . . a manmade hell. It's called shackling, and it's done to people with mental health conditions. 

Kriti: There's no formal definition for shackling, but it's a very rudimentary form of being tied up. You could be chained with a metallic chain around your ankle to a tree. You could be tied with a rope in a cattle shed, you could be locked up in a chicken coop or even a room within the home. 

Host: Families do it to family members when they feel like there's no better option, institutions do it to people in their care. Shackling takes place all over the world, and it cuts across age, gender, class, ethnicity. It’s often seen as just the way things are done. How did that happen? 

Kamundia: That's such a good question. And I'll answer it with a story. 

Host: Elizabeth Kamundia is the director of the disability rights division at Human Rights Watch. A few years ago, she had just finished a fact-finding mission in Ghana... 

Kamundia: When I was leaving the country and I was going through the passport control and the immigration official asked me, did you have a good time in Ghana? 

And I said, yes. It was amazing. Accra, the food, all of that, except for one thing I said. I said, you shackle people with mental health conditions, you chain them. And he said. Mm. But what can we do? If we don't, they'll run away or they'll harm someone else. In other words, it's a society where this way of treating people is so accepted and so normalized that really it's not that big of a deal. Right? 

And I remember turning to him and saying, yeah, but you know, my father had a mental health condition. 

And surely there are other ways to manage it because we didn't chain him. Right, and we had a moment there of exchange and then, you know, I got my passport and walked away. 

Ngofeen: I love that you're at the end of your trip, you're like, let me talk to the border control person 

Kamundia: Who has nothing to do with shackling, by the way, poor official got a mouthful. 

[ Laughter fade out.] 

Host: That poor official got only a mouthful, but we're going to give you a whole podcast episode! About shackling. Why it exists, why it's a human rights violation and how it can, and is, being defeated. 

This is Rights & Wrongs, a podcast from Human Rights Watch. I'm Ngofeen Mputubwele. I am a writer, a lawyer, and a radio producer. Human Rights Watch asked me to look at human rights hotspots around the world through the eyes and ears of people on the front lines of history. 

This week, break the chains! 

Human Rights Watch first started investigating shackling in 2011, in Ghana. And they quickly realized the practice was not confined to that country. Their next big investigation took place in Indonesia... 

Kriti: We started looking at shackling in Indonesia because we had heard that 57,000 people with mental health conditions had been chained or shackled at least once in their lives. 

Host: This is Kriti Sharma. She works with Elizabeth and is the associate director of the disability rights program at Human Rights Watch. That number she mentioned, 57,000, came from the Indonesian government. Kriti went to investigate in 2014. 

Kriti: It was the first time I visited Indonesia, and I remember traveling for several hours by road from Jakarta, the capital, into a rural area in West Java. We approached the village nearly at dusk. It was getting dark when we reached and I walked up to a house where I had heard someone was being shackled. 

I met a man who said to me, come, I'll take you to meet my son. And he walked across his lawn, uh, to a shed. I couldn't see. It was very dark. And as I approached. I saw a very tiny patched shed, and I couldn't believe somebody could be living inside. I remember peering through a slit. And I saw a man crouched, naked, uh, cramped on the floor. He didn't even have enough space to stretch his legs. And that was how I first met Sodikin. 

Host: Kriti was there to do what Human Rights Watch researchers do: interview people who have been victims of human rights abuses and document their stories. But Sodikin, a man in his 30s, was an unusual interview subject, in that his human rights were in the process of being violated. 

Kriti: There was a single light bulb that illuminated his little shed hanging by a wire. The stench was quite unbearable because, Sodikin unfortunately had been living in that shed for eight years. 

For eight years he urinated, defecated, ate, slept in that tiny area, no larger than maybe two feet by two feet and he couldn't even stand up because his muscles had completely given way. He hadn't been able to do any exercise. He was bathed once in three months. 

When his family realized that he couldn't even stand up anymore, they had to create another hole at the bottom of the shed so they could pass plates of food inside so he could eat. 

When I first saw Sodikin, I remember him looking up at me, but he didn't say anything. I tried through my interpreter to speak to him, but his mother told me that he hadn't spoken in years. He would nod off and on and acknowledge when she passed food. 

He would pass his plate out after he'd finished eating, but he was so traumatized from being shackled that he didn't really speak. 

Host: Sodikin couldn't speak to Kriti, but she did gather from his family the story of how he ended up confined in that shed. 

Kriti: Sodikin was in his thirties when he developed a mental health condition. He had a breakdown and there was, um, a disagreement within the family. He raised his voice. Uh, if I remember correctly, he broke a few things in the house. There was also a lot of pressure from their neighbors. They did take Sodikin to a number of faith healers because they thought that initially it was a supernatural problem that, uh, it could be cured through, um, you know, faith and, uh, spiritual healing. 

But when that didn't work, they felt he had no choice but to keep him in this hut. To shackle him. 

And the father told me that he saw Sodikin as a burden, that he was waiting for him to die. He didn't know what else to do. 

When I left Sodikin's house, I felt. You know, very hopeless. I just thought this is the kind of situation where it is such a rural area. There is no form of any service or support and. 

What else would the family do? And it, it's a case that really haunted me. 

Host: Two years later, Kriti returned to Sodikin's village. 

Kriti: I remember approaching his house and not seeing the shed in the garden and my heart sank. My first thought was, Sodikin must be dead. And you know, I get emotional even thinking about it now because it was just so, I, I just felt desperate, you know, I started walking faster and I almost ran to the kitchen where I saw his sister. 

And I said, Hey, you know, this is, this is Kriti, I don't know if you remember me. And she said, of course I remember you. You had come to see my brother. And I said, well, where is he? Where is Sodikin? And she was beaming. And she said, well, you know, you can go find him in the factory. And I said, what? 

She said, Sodikin is working in a factory stitching school, uniforms for boys, and it's just around the corner. I can take you there. And we walked to the factory and I couldn't recognize him. He had short hair, looking very neat in a crisp shirt and trousers sitting, cutting uniforms, stitching buttons. 

I didn't disturb him for, for a good five minutes 'cause I was just watching him do his work and I couldn't believe this could be the same man. 

Host: This time, Kriti was able to interview Sodikin. 

Sodikin/Indonesian: I am just happy. I am happy now to be able to help my parents. 

Kriti: And he shared how happy he was. That’s something he kept saying. I’m so happy to be working here. I’m finally happy now. 

Sodikin is a man of few words. But his body language says so much. He is very respectful, very dignified, very polite. And you can't imagine that someone like him was then shackled. 

Sodikin doesn't remember his eight years being shackled. It's something he has completely, blocked out and repressed, uh, due to the trauma. He does remember that patch in the lawn where his hut was, his mother told me that he often circles that area walking around, knowing there is some deep connection to it. 

Archival/AFP: [call to prayer] 

Host: After recovering from his eight years of being shackled, Sodikin had become the family's primary breadwinner. He even performed the call to prayer, a sign of prestige in the community. So what had happened to Sodikin in those two years between Kriti's visits, from the time when the family was waiting for him to die, to the time when he was a working and happy member of his community? We'll hear about that, when we come back. 

[HRW ad] 

Host: In 2016, several years after Kriti first met Sodikin, Human Rights Watch and its Indonesian partners, including the Indonesian Mental Health Association, released a report on shackling in Indonesia. It had an effect. The Indonesian health minister committed to ensuring access to mental support and services in every one of the ten thousand primary health centers across the country. Human Rights Watch went back to Indonesia every six months to provide technical support and to make sure the health minister's commitment translated into reality on the ground. The Indonesian government trained community workers to go door to door, asking if someone was shackled there, providing information on disability and mental health, providing referrals if needed, and freeing people from their chains. 

Kriti: That is the program that supported him in rehabilitation for six months, providing counseling and access to medication and, you know, re-socializing him to support him getting over the trauma. 

The moment he came home from the rehabilitation center, he rolled out a mattress in their living room, and he went to sleep on the floor like he did before. 

It was as if those eight years never happened. 

His family told me that once he remembered and he confronted them and he asked his parents, how could you do this to me? How could you do this to your own son, to a family member? How could you treat me like that? And the family broke down and his father and mother both cried. 

And after that it was never mentioned again. 

Kamundia: So when I first went to Ghana, um, in November, 2022 ... 

Host: This is Elizabeth Kamundia again, talking about that trip she took to Ghana that led to her giving a mouthful to that security guard at the airport. 

Kamundia: in the eastern part of Ghana is a prayer camp as they call them, which is attached to a church and essentially is, towards the back of the church, kind of tiny rooms. , and I met a woman I'll call Pamela there, and she was staring out of a hall that was bare, puddles of urine on the floor, a threadbare mattress at her corner, and for windows, it was just kind of metal bars, like a prison. And she was staring out from that space, and I remember walking up to her and trying to have a conversation and, and just kind of understanding that this was her life, this room, 

From what I understood is that she has a mental health condition. They didn't name which, they just said she's “unwell in the mind.” 

Um, and they didn't feel that they could care for her at home and they felt that she needed religious intervention. 

I went back in October of 2023 and she was still there. Just that she was much more skinny. 

Like she was gaunt and her eyes just like, seemed enormous in her face as she'd lost so much weight. And I asked her about life in the camp and she crumpled and just began crying. And she said they wouldn't let me go to church. They do not allow me to go to church, and I remember being astounded because she was in a prayer camp. And I asked the assistant who was with me, one of the staff who worked at this camp, like why, why is this the situation with her? And you know, he just turned to her casually and said, how can I allow you to go to church? You know? And I looked at her and there were feces under her nails and in her hair, and she was in really bad shape. And I thought, she needs care. She needs support. She is in a place where she's being violated. This is not a place of care or support. I just, I, I, I saw her and I thought, oh my goodness. Just nourishing food, water, a cozy bed, what it feels like to be seen as human again, this is, this is what Pamela needs. 

Host: That was the last time Elizabeth saw Pamela. Elizabeth doesn't know if she has received that nourishing food and cozy bed, or the medicines and therapy she so clearly needed. But she does know whose responsibility it is, legally, to provide it. 

Kamundia: When I think about Pamela and what it will take for her to live in the community. It's a responsibility of the state. 

It, it's great if families step in and, and, and support their family members, especially our in you our African context. This is, this would be great, but it remains a state responsibility. And Ghana has ratified the disability treaty that places this obligation on Ghana to, uh, monitor places where people are held and to hold accountable, people who are violating their rights under the guise of cure and treatment. 

Host: The Disability Treaty Elizabeth mentioned – it's more formally known as The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. About 186 countries have signed on to it, and, basically, it legally obliges them to allow for the full participation and inclusion of people with disabilities in their societies. This of course includes people with mental health conditions. 

Human Rights Watch started investigating shackling in Ghana back in 2011. Elizabeth says the Ghanian government has been responsive. Yet there are still far too many Pamelas. 

Kamundia: This is an issue where when we meet with the Deputy Minister for Health, like we did in Ghana in 2023, they're not saying. It's okay. Right? Like it's not one of those issues where there's government officials are like, yeah, well, too much democracy is like ruining young people or whatever. 

No. This is one of those issues where they are agreeing with you. They're like, it's horrendous. There are more than 5,000 of these camps in Ghana. It's awful. We need to do something about it. But when, you know, I remember in one meeting kind of saying to the mental health authority staff that the Mental Health Act gives you the authority to shut these places down. 

And she said to me, yes, but there are thousands of people held in these places. Where will I take them if I shut these places down? 

Host: Elizabeth says it's a complex issue that requires a complex response from the government. Include mental health in your budgets. Fund communit- based mental health services rather than psychiatric hospitals. Integrate mental health care into primary health care. 

Kamundia: When you fund maternal health include maternal mental health because postpartum depression is real. 

It's some, it, it happens to many women, and so include that when you fund HIV, include. Something on mental health, different things need to work well within government to solve this. It is not an impossible situation to solve. 

Host: So far we've talked about cases of shackling in developing countries. But it happens in more developed countries, too, although it's more isolated. Here's Kriti again. 

Kriti: We have found cases in Tokyo where someone was locked in a room, in a flat. In Sweden we found a case where someone had been imprisoned or locked up in a shed in the middle of the woods. 

So it occurs in, in different forms, in different countries. 

Host: Soin the United States, cases of shackling, they’re pretty rare. And when they happen they make the news. Just recently there were sensational reports of man in Connecticut whose stepmother had allegedly locked him in a room for over 20 years, until he started a fire and escaped when the fire department arrived. Where I live, in New York City, there are thousands of people with psychosocial disabilities who fend for themselves on the streets and in the subways. I see it everyday, and, to be honest, it's so common here that you kind of learn how to walk by it without looking too closely. But you kind of have to choose to ignore someone else's misery, and at the very least it's seen as a social problem in need of a political solution. One of the things that has made shackling so difficult to address around the world is that it's usually invisible. It happens out of sight, in institutions or in private homes. And people don't want to talk about it. The stigma around mental health issues is pretty deep. The first step to solving it, say both Elizabeth and Kriti, is naming it. And calling it out for what it is. 

Kamundia: And that's why it continues and continues because it isn't necessarily named as a wrong. And, and, and so naming it as a wrong in the law, of course, is one piece. And then bringing that down to people. The education piece, the anti-stigma piece, the awareness raising piece is the other really important part of this. 

Host: Changing mindsets changes behavior. Kriti has a story about this from when she first started to get interested in human rights. It's not about shackling, it's about another seemingly intractable problem... 

Kriti: I traveled to Senegal when I was 19 to do an internship and I remember I was interviewing a man on domestic violence and forced marriage in a little village on the border of Mauritania. 

And he had started doing a program, learning about human rights. And he told me that when he understood that the constitution of his country ensured rights for women. He stopped beating his wife, and I couldn't believe that, you know, I thought he's just saying that because he thinks that's what I want to hear. 

But when I spoke to his wife later, she said that, you know, all their married life, he had beaten her. And just one day abruptly, he stopped. And it was because, you know, he thought that was the role of a man in a marriage. That if the woman is out of line in any way that she would, she must be beaten. 

And I thought that was really powerful, that just by knowing and learning that someone has human rights, you can change behavior. 

Kamundia: You change minds and you change hearts, and you get people to think about it in a, in a different way. But you won't, as long as the narrative is that there are some spirits where unless you chain them, they will not leave the person. Right. Like, 'cause these are the kind of narratives that are there, and so there's something very powerful in saying, no, actually this is torture. No, actually this is a human rights violation. No, it is not treatment. There's something very powerful to, to doing that. 

Host: So from what I gathered from Elizabeth and Kriti, here is the recipe for ending the scourge of shackling. Name it for what it is: a cruel human rights violation; educate governments and their people about it; make and enforce laws against it; and provide community-based services, including mental health support. 

Kriti: All you have to do is look at examples of people like Sodikin. Once they receive the support they need, they can live like everybody else: having a job, looking after their families, , having, , community roles. And it's really not that much that the government needs to do 

Host: In the past decade the rates for shackling in Ghana and Indonesia have plummeted. Yet there has been some backsliding, even for success stories like Sodikin... 

Kriti: When the pandemic hit in 2020, this program was one of the first to be cut. This meant that people like Sodikin did not have access to that support overnight. And in Sodikin’s case, it led to a deterioration of his mental health. 

He was then shackled once again by the family, and he lived in the same inhumane conditions that he had once before. 

Host: Government services were eventually restored, and the organization that helped Sodikin before helped him again. They came to the family home and convinced his parents to let him come to the rehabilitation center in the village, where he remains to this day. 

Kriti: It was, you know, a mutual decision almost for him to stay in the rehabilitation center. But I would say that it was tough for him to then have to leave the family home once again. 

Host: Last word, from Elizabeth, who has a way of stripping down a complex social problem to its moral core. 

Kamundia: It feels to me in some ways really basic because it's asking to be a human being among other human beings in society. This is it to be, to belong, to be, to be part of all of us, right? Like part of what life is, the good, the bad, all of it. 

Host: Elizabeth Kamundia is director of the disability rights program at Human Rights Watch. Kriti Sharma is associate director. You can read more about shackling at hrw.org. 

You’ve been listening to Rights and Wrongs, from Human Rights Watch. This episode was produced by me and Curtis Fox. Our associate producer is Sophie Soloway. Our executive producers are Ifé Fatunase and Stacy Sullivan. Thanks also to Anthony Gale.  

Please let others know about this podcast, y’all! Tell your friends and family, post about it on social media, leave a review in your podcast app. Our goal as you know is one billion listeners, and we will NOT rest until... well, we’ll probably rest when we get to 100 million. 

I’m Ngofeen Mputubwele. Talk to you again in two weeks.