Hatred is not care: on the crimes endured, and the duty to act

Reading on systemic violence, psychiatric abuse, and our coordinated response through science, justice, and One Health education through our collective action

Reading time: 8–10 minutes

Executive summary: invitation to join next week meeting, and a forthcoming mutual aid working group on medical torture, with a first-hand account of my partner’s near-fatal experience in an emergency room last week, setting the stage for a broader reflection on institutional hatred, gendered and racialised violence, and the global neglect of survivors. This message denounces impunity, reaffirms the path of collective dignity, and invites participation in a major Horizon Europe partnership to protect brain health and life trajectories from early childhood, through education, nutrition, and coordinated public action. The call is urgent. The work is real. The network is growing strong.

The life of my partner was nearly destroyed last week in an emergency department, within a context marked by the normalization of hatred and violence directed against her as a woman, against interracial couples such as ours, and more broadly against individuals who resist criminal domination in any form. These attacks are not isolated nor spontaneous, but part of a sustained pattern in which vicious, organized actors act with impunity. Fear, social complicity, and systemic corruption suppress both lawful intervention and the reporting of such crimes, as bearing witness is itself perceived as an act of defiance against criminal networks embedded in positions of power. She has since made a full recovery, without the use of any pharmaceutical intervention. Upon discharge, she was handed a selection of substances, which I retained as physical evidence pending legal action. The nature and combination of these substances raise serious ethical and medical concerns. Her previous experiences include being held against her will, repeated sexual assaults, and near-trafficking to a third country, set for a live of enslavement and further cruelty, instead of the love we now enjoy. That was ten years ago. I now keep the evidence of the near poisoning in one of the pockets of my work Cordura pants, awaiting our chance for justice. Law needs enforced. These grave crimes, committed within the last few years, still piling up, remain within the legal period for prosecution. During that same time of her kidnapping, her father and another male relative died under circumstances that must not be dismissed as unrelated. In systems marked by organized abuse, the erosion of protective relationships is seldom coincidental.

For years, we have worked to reach a safer position from which justice can be pursued. This is never an easy path, as the perpetrators, their accomplices, and those conditioned into silence remain as aggressive as possible in their intent to ruin us, silence us, and destroy every opportunity for recovery or progress. Through denial, dissociation, and distortion, they perpetuate harm, obstruct justice, and intensify the injuries suffered by those they aim to erase.

My love is a bright, cheerful woman from Indonesia. That is why they lust her, and did their best to trade her for money and the pleasure of others. Beautiful, intelligent, top athlete and healthy. Her intelligence, athletic excellence, radiant presence and health have made her a target for those who view human beings not as persons but as commodities to exploit. That is why they attempted to trade her, to reduce her to a source of profit and pleasure for others. Her dignity, strength and brilliance are precisely what they sought to erase. Some have suggested that we pause our work, as if silence or withdrawal were a remedy. Others insinuate we should step back from leading the action I founded, as though retreat might grant us peace. But there is no refuge in passivity. The only remedy is the enforcement of law, the recognition of rights, and the immediate cessation of abuse. That is the only respite we require: the restoration of justice. We do not seek pity, nor exemption. We demand respect, and we claim the right to continue leading, building and protecting. Those who abuse, exploit or destroy others, regardless of their rank or social cover, are simply criminals. Them all, to be sorted in rank and file for their deeds. They are the ones who must stop. There can be no negotiation with impunity, no reconciliation with systemic harm. The only outcome acceptable is justice, fully realised. We will continue, together, and with all those who stand firm in the face of violence and betrayal.

I am deeply ashamed of every person who, through cowardice, indifference or personal gain, tolerates or facilitates these atrocities, whether through silent complicity or active collaboration. I am appalled by each expression of institutional corruption, moral collapse and administrative cruelty that reduces lives to waste, treating people as disposable. Our lives, our work and our shared vocation exist precisely to end such violence, not only for ourselves but for those who still endure it without voice, recognition or support. We are building a future grounded in care, knowledge and justice, committed to the global protection of children, to the prevention of suffering through education and to the formation of dignified living conditions for all. In that spirit, I will soon announce the formation of a working group on medical torture, dedicated to mutual aid, international documentation and the defence of survivors. This is our path forward, sustained by love, truth and refusal to yield to their hatred, no matter how deeply rooted or institutionally protected. Education is our path forward. The destiny we must work to achieve, despite their loathing on us, their every act to destroy goodness.

Theirs is pure evil, criminal insanity. I had been holding for a while the wish to share late Suman FerIt makes me feel sick in my stomach to witness the ongoing cruelty and calculated dehumanisation inflicted by systems that claim to care. What we are facing is not mere negligence but criminal insanity and structural evil, perpetuated through institutional power and social indifference. I had long postponed sharing the work of the late Suman Fernando, whose support and intellectual generosity helped shape my early research before I began my doctoral path. I adapted one of their instruments to the Spanish context and consulted thousands of professionals, survivors and user-led groups across the country. Now the time has come to name clearly what he and his group never stopped confronting: the racism, the hatred and the epistemic violence embedded in psychiatric practice. Those of us who remain must carry forward this work with full awareness that we are not merely reforming a system but dismantling the master’s house brick by brick, through truth, solidarity and refusal to stay silent.nando work, before his passing away. I owe to him and his work group, as they supported my own research before starting my own doctoral years. I adapted their own instrument to the Spanish context, and inquired all mental health and patient, user and victim lead groups I could find. Thousands. By now, the time is ripe to focus on the racism and the hatred underlying, as he and they did, and keep on, those of us still alive and kicking, dismantling the masters house:

Hatred, structural violence and the normalization of cruelty continue to shape the daily reality of countless young lives. I write this as I reflect on a report from the United Kingdom, where the number of young people detained under the Mental Health Act has risen sharply over the past decade. This increase is not distributed evenly. It falls disproportionately upon Black, Asian, and minoritised ethnic groups, and most tragically, upon young women and girls. Black British youth are consistently overrepresented across all forms of psychiatric detention, including emergency sectioning, long-term institutionalisation, and criminal-psychiatric interfaces.

This is not an isolated trend, neither in the United Kingdom nor anywhere else. It reflects a widespread and global pattern of systemic abandonment disguised as care, of institutional racism normalised through administrative routine and professional detachment. It is a hateful reality, concealed beneath the surface of seemingly stable and affluent societies. The violence is real, sustained and measurable. It is institutional, often sanctioned by the state, and it destroys lives, families and futures under the pretense of intervention and support. In this context, I affirm clearly and without hesitation that dark skin is beautiful, tanned skin is beautiful, every human body and every life story deserves pride, dignity and full protection. What we confront is not disorganisation or failure, but a crime. And like all crimes, it must be named, addressed and brought to an end, structurally and irreversibly.

In this spirit, I am honoured to share something that speaks directly to what matters beyond fighting racism and hatred at every occasion. Our new Horizon Europe proposal is underway. It is a structural response and a collective opportunity to protect brains, bodies and futures through science, justice and education. This is the real work that must continue, whatever they do. Those who hate will go on hating, often from positions of unearned power, which they misuse to attack lives, silence truths and destroy what others build. They have harmed us already, again and again. But we remain committed to life, and we do not want more harm. We have asked, pleaded, demanded for the violence to stop, but it continues. So now we act, together, and invite all who believe in dignity and healing to join us. Strength lies in numbers, in courage and in doing what is right:

Dear all,

I am reaching out to those who have expressed interest in contributing to the Horizon Europe proposal on brain health, as well as to Dr Anupoma, who has kindly accepted to serve as Principal Investigator. Following our recent meeting, the draft proposal is now under active development, and the first batch of invitations has been shared. I would like to propose a follow-up video call late next week to define next steps. Friday 8th is suggested, and I invite you to indicate your availability here:

https://doodle.com/meeting/organize/id/dJWV1x9e

This Horizon call requires the formation of a large, transnational and interdisciplinary partnership, with a total indicative budget of 150 million euros and a minimum of 3 million per beneficiary. Ministries and public authorities must be formally engaged. Our proposal addresses brain health through early, preventive interventions rooted in education, nutrition, and open science. This implies a coordinated strategy to contact all EU Ministries of Health and Education, relevant national and international organisations, research institutes, and leading experts. With determination, this is entirely achievable within the coming two weeks.

I am ready to lead that effort on behalf of the consortium, but ask for your direction as core members regarding what to send and to whom. I recommend we also include top international experts, including from the United States, who are now eligible as full partners. Their recent work in nutritional neuroscience and systemic interventions is highly relevant and would strengthen the proposal considerably. This initiative is strongly aligned with the broader mission of the EU BEACON One Health Education action, which supports consortia formation and will serve as a non-beneficiary partner contributing to scientific dissemination and long-term implementation. Our action, now over 500 members strong and rapidly growing, is mandated to develop and deploy open health curricula and the open-source tools required to enable systemic transformation in schools and communities.

The proposal places the extended and embodied mind at the core of the public health and education agenda. Brain health is not a narrow clinical issue but the result of interactions between physiology, psychosocial environment, and ecological context. When the gut barrier is compromised, inflammatory signals reach the brain, leading to neuroimmune activation, cognitive dysfunction and long-term vulnerability. These mechanisms are modulated by nutrition, stress, and relational stability in early life. What children eat, how they are taught, and the safety of their emotional and social environments form the basis of either resilience or pathology. We aim to intervene precisely at this level, through school-based systems capable of delivering health literacy, developmental monitoring, nutrition-sensitive education, and collective care.

This proposal is not a pilot, nor an academic exercise. It is a platform for coordinated, pan-European implementation. We propose a structural redesign of early-life health governance, centred in the school, anchored in families and communities, and accountable through transparent data systems built on FAIR standards. We act before decline begins, to prevent entire lifecourse disease trajectories before they unfold. Education becomes medicine. Schools become preventive clinics. Meals become tools of peace, learning and regeneration.

If this aligns with your institutional mission or scientific focus, we welcome your involvement. The draft proposal, including invitation letter and narrative outline, is available here for your review and contributions:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fq4FoRGbEdBCmE0ob11rL1IwNgXrhSBXyMATy7xPh1g/edit?tab=t.0

We are working to ensure only those who wish to engage remain in the loop. Following this coordination call, we will close the consortium communications and move forward with active participants only. I also encourage each of you to help build national teams, assign roles, and mentor young researchers within your contexts. The future strength and resilience of our network depends on this distributed leadership. All missions and travel funded through our action will prioritise inclusivity and capacity-building, focusing especially on early-career and marginalised talent. Discussion, co-creation and open review will continue on our platforms. What we are building is not just a proposal, but a foundation for democratic knowledge generation, long-term equity, and the prevention of harm through structural foresight. It begins, quite concretely, with how we select school meals, and how we design the systems that allow children to thrive.

Thank you for your attention and engagement. I look forward to working with you all. I am wishing you all a great weekend!

Henning (né Enric) Garcia Torrents (it/those)

University professor in training, Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, Spain
EU BEACON One Health Education CA24106 COST action, founder and scientific communications, dissemination and exploitation officer (OC-2024-1-27164)