a
reference to the
Alaska Mental Health
Bill, a formal document proposed in the mid-1960s to the United
States legislature to enact as a
law. The Siberia
Bill proposed that a
Siberian-
type camp be created for mental health patients in a remote part of
Alaska, a region much like
Siberia. The
bill proposed a "simplified commitment procedure," allowing any peace
officer, friend, medical
doctor and of
course,
psychiatrist, to start commitment proceedings on a person. It was worded in such a way that any
man, woman or child could be seized off the street and transferred without trial to this
Siberian-
type camp. The Church of
Scientology along with other
civil rights groups joined forces to fight this proposal from becoming
law. A
campaign was launched to inform the
public of what was happening. This, along with a massive letter-writing
campaign which inspired political opposition,
succeeded in stopping the commitment
section of the
bill, leaving merely an
act to authorize mental health funding to the territory of
Alaska.
a
nickname for the
Alaska Mental Health
Act, introduced in the US
Congress in 1955.
LRH called it the Siberia
Bill because under its provisions any
man, woman or child could be seized without trial and transferred to the million-
acre mental-health
facility which was to be established in
Alaska, thus creating a
Siberia (a
northern region of the USSR and traditional
place of exile for Russian criminals) in the US. This
bill was defeated.