Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Rights Group Urges Review of Drug Detentions

By Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
01 February 2010


A leading rights group has urged the United Nations to reconsider its support of government drug rehabilitation centers, following allegations of abuse.

“UN officials agree that these centers are illegal and abusive,” Joe Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Now Unicef and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime need to make clear to the Cambodian government that the centers should be shut down.”

A new Human Rights Watch report alleges that government rehab centers forcibly detain suspected drug addicts, who are “often forced to work at hard manual labor or exercise as a means of ‘treatment.’”

Anand Chaudhuri, project coordinator for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Cambodia, said treatment could not be effective in an environment of detention.

“You cannot detain somebody and say that it is treatment,” he said. “We have to have some evidence, and we have to give the choice. Then only it works.”

Khieu Samon, deputy director of the Ministry of Interior’s traffic and crime department, said Monday the report by Human Rights Watch was “not true.”

“The drug center is not a place to detain or commit abuse to drug users,” he said. “Normally, we receive the request from drug users and the parents of drug users to cure the child in the center.”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This toilet viet has no brain.

This skinny viet might come again and bark louder. But I'll hit it again and again tirelessly.

This Viet is a toilet germ but can bark the same voice like a dog. Flush this toilet germ the skinny viet.

Its head is fatally hit
and it will soon die a horrible death.

Anonymous said...

Idiot Group! if you want to take over drug addicts to your country, please come and take them we are always welcome you. But if you dare not to do that, shut up your smelly mouth.

Anonymous said...

they need reform in many sector in cambodia.