Abuse in the Name of Treatment - Drug Detention Centers in Asia

In Asia hundreds of thousands of drug users are detained under inhumane circumstances in compulsory rehabilitation centers. Now HCLU, along with international organizations such as UNAIDS or UNODC, is calling for the closure of these camps.

According to estimations, there are hundreds of thousands of people kept in compulsory drug detention centers in Vietnam, China, Thailand and Laos. It is easy to get in to one of these centers. Some people enter voluntarily in the hope of kicking their drug habit, others are sent there by their families who pay for their “treatment”; but in some cities, it often happens that the military police just collect street children, drug users, sex workers and other groups on the street considered “deviant” by the authorities and detains them in a camp for years, without any due process or right of appeal. It’s easy to get in – but it’s hard to get out. Detainees are often forced to work for free, starved, beaten, tortured and raped – but they don’t get any treatment or rehabilitation. If they finally leave the camps, they feel more disintegrated from society than at any time before. The vast majority of detainees who leave the camps start to use drugs again or engage in other illegal activities. The governments of Laos, Cambodia and Thailand received millions of dollars from Western governments to build camps to treat drug addicts. Tax payers in donor countries had no idea what is happening in these camps before Human Rights Watch documented the widespread human rights abuses. One of the centers – Koh Kor – was closed thanks to human rights advocacy but there are still too many in operation. HCLU, along with international organizations such as UNAIDS or UNODC, is calling for the closure of these camps. We hope after watching our new movie more people will join us and put pressure on these governments to stop the abuse in the name of drug treatment.

If you want to learn more read the related reports of Human Rights Watch:

Posted by Peter Sarosi

THIS ARTICLE IS A DUPLICATION OF THE ORIGINAL AT DRUGREPORTER.NET. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO POST A COMMENT, PLEASE DO SO ON DRUGREPORTER BY CLICKING ON THIS LINK

Share

Related articles

International Drug Policy Reform Conference Videos I.

The Drugreporter was the official filmmaker of the International Drug Policy Reform Conference 2013 in Denver, Colorado. Watch our movies produced at this great event! First part with videos from the opening and closing sessions.

We Can End AIDS - March in Washington DC

Activists marched to the White House demanding greater access to HIV treatment and prevention - we asked them what are the major barriers, watch and share our video!

What makes a good parent?

A man from Borsodbóta had some logs valued at 3,200 forints in his wheelbarrow, when the police surrounded him, handcuffed him, and took him, along with his 17 and 19 year old sons, to jail. They kept them in jail for three days. Without taking into consideration that the 17 year old son was a minor, they interrogated him, didn’t give him proper representation, and made him sign papers without him knowing their content.