Human Rights Watch report highlights the torture of people who use drugs in Cambodia

Drug addicts in Cambodia are not getting access to treatment but instead being subject to torture, physical and sexual violence that in no way functions as a form of rehabilitation. A new report from Human Rights Watch entitled “Skin on the Cable” details harrowing abuse carried out in state-run rehabilitation centres. Only 1 or 2 percent of the inmates enter drug rehabilitation centres voluntarily, the majority are detained illegally or are detained on request of their parents or relatives. The detention process is rife with corruption, once arrested detainees have the option to bribe their way out of detention. However if they do not have money to pay a bribe they end up in a detention centre with no access to legal counsel, there is also no judicial authorization of detention, nor any oversight or review. 

There is no medical evidence to suggest that the methods used in these centres to cure addiction – which include sweating while doing labour – have any value in the rehabilitation of people with drug dependency issues. The HRW report also brings attention to the fact that vocational courses and forced labour are frequently designed to benefit the staff of the centre not the inmates. After release the majority of the detainees return to drugs and subsequently return to the centres. 

The report also highlights several alarming factors in this brutal and pointless state policy. There are many detainees under the age of 18, who are not separated from the other detainees, as well as many detainees with mental health problems. Another distressing factor is that detainees in drug rehabilitation centres are being coerced into donating blood. This not only breaches an individuals rights to bodily integrity but also taking blood donations at high-risk of HIV infection is another serious health policy failure that puts in danger the whole Cambodian population. The HIV/Aids prevalence in Cambodia is among the highest in Asia and the Cambodian government is acting irresponsibly by not applying appropriate state policy measures to curb the prevalence rate. 

Many of the people detained in the centres have experienced difficult childhoods, have lived on the streets or growing up in refugee camps. Many fit to the category that the Cambodian government describes as “undesirables”. As the detention centres have no affect on the problems they are supposed to address the HRW report concludes that the “real motivations for Cambodia’s drug detention centres appear to be a combination of social control, punishment for the perceived moral failure of drug use, and profit”.

It is clear that these drug centres not only breach international law on many counts but are also inhumane. One former detainee, Kakada was quoted as saying “I think this is not a rehab center but a torturing center”. The report urges that the Royal Cambodian Government should immediately close the detention centres, investigate the abuse claims and take action against the perpetrators.