May's story

May was born in Vinh Ko Province in Vietnam. She left home at the age of 14 to find work and help her parents support their family. Two years later she came to Phnom Penh with a group of her friends in hopes of starting a new life.

When May was 23 she got married. Shortly after her wedding her mother passed away. Soon thereafter she began using heroin. May says she first used heroin to suppress the feelings of grief she had surrounding her mother’s death. She says she continues using heroin because it eliminates her worries about her home and family in Vietnam. When it was brought to the attention of May’s family that she was using heroin, they disowned her. May’s husband also divorced her, citing family pressure to “find a better wife who was not a drug user” as a reason.

Three years after she began using heroin, May remarried and gave birth to a baby girl. At the time she was living in an apartment in Phnom Penh; one year later she became homeless when she was evicted for nonpayment of rent. May, along with her husband and daughter, relocated to the streets of Boeung Tra Bek.

May decided to stop using drugs. She maintained abstinence for two months, but felt pressured by her friends to use. She says she began using again because she felt like she had no family.

Soon after she returned to using heroin, May was arrested for injecting drugs. She was taken into custody along with her two-year-old daughter, and they were brought to a detox center called “Galop 4.” They were placed in a locked room with 29 other people and no water, no toilet, and no beds. They were let out of the cell twice daily to shower, use the bathroom, get water, and eat. The food, she explains, was less-than-adequate portions of rice and small amounts of vegetables.

In addition to May’s daughter, there were two other children in the cell. One was a six-month-old baby boy and the other, a 10-year-old boy. All the children had been incarcerated along with their parents. May reports that the guards at Galop 4 treated the children as if they were inmates; the children were denied use of the toilet unless it was during a release time.

May explains that the 10-year-old boy had been brought in with his father. The boy had been crying for six days, complaining of a stomach ache, and was completely ignored and denied medical care. On the night of the sixth day the guards took pity on the child and allowed him to go outside to play. The boy ran away from Galop 4 following the advice of his father. May explains that he was a street kid and was probably accustomed to taking care of himself.

May received no education about drug use or anything else while in Galop 4. When asked whether there were any support groups in the center, May laughs and says “No. Nothing ike that.” She reports she was not offered any medication to lessen the physical effects of her heroin withdrawal, and when she asked for aspirin she was yelled at and denied. A few days after the little boy escaped, a man attempted to escape during the afternoon release. Three guards caught him and dragged him across the yard beating him with batons in plain view of everyone, including the children, until he was unconscious. The guards then tied the man’s unconscious body to a tree and left him there for the night.

When May woke up in the morning the man was gone; the guards claimed he had escaped.

May feared for the life of herself and her daughter. She escaped with her daughter during morning release that day. She returned to Boueng Tra Bek. Her daughter was then taken into the custody of her husband’s family and now lives in Vietnam.

May feels that, as a drug user, people automatically assume she is HIV-positive and look at her as inferior. Most Cambodians lack education about HIV, and therefore tend to make their own assumptions about the virus. May has never been tested for HIV because she assumes that her daughter and husband are negative, and that she is as well.

May expresses her desire to stop using drugs and has reduced her heroin use by half. She and her husband currently work as “recyclers,” collecting cans and bottles to sell to local recycling centers. They earn a combined $5USD per day doing this, half of which they spend on heroin. May says that heroin prices have recently doubled and this has made it more difficult to obtain. She often has to split the cost of heroin with others in order to be able to afford it.

May hopes to find steady employment, though she is not actively looking right now, and then to find affordable housing. She feels that she will be a good citizen, something very important to her, if she stops using drugs. May remains strong through her daily struggles with homelessness and drug use.

She hopes that police will stop doing roundups in her neighborhood and bringing those detained to detox centers like Galop 4. She states that no one actually gets help at detox centers and that, by bringing people there, police are just leaving them for dead. May also hopes that police will become better educated about, and therefore more understanding of, people who use drugs.

This story is taken from AT WHAT COST?: HIV AND HUMAN RIGHTS CONSEQUENCES OF THE GLOBAL “WAR ON DRUGS”