Russian Dissident Forced Into Mental Hospital

MOSCOW — Russian psychiatrists warned yesterday that the Kremlin was preparing to revive the Soviet practice of locking up dissidents in asylums after an opposition activist was forcibly incarcerated at a mental health clinic.

Larisa Arap, a member of United Civil Front, which is led by Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion, was beaten, chained to a bed, and repeatedly injected with drugs after she was detained in the northern city of Murmansk on July 5, opposition officials said.

Mrs. Arap, 48, had apparently earned the ire of city authorities after publishing an article in an opposition newspaper alleging that children at the same psychiatric hospital were frequently mistreated.

Doctors at the clinic threatened to incarcerate Mrs. Arap's daughter Taisia after she demanded to see her mother. On July 18, a local court signed an order for Mrs. Arap's compulsory treatment. Since then, she has been held in a ward for violent patients.