By Hyo-Jin Paik
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia
BEIJING, China – According to a report released by the Human Rights Watch, drug offenders in compulsory drug detention centers in China are denied access to treatment for their addictions and are exposed to physical abuse and unpaid labor.
The UN announced that as many as half million Chinese are held at these centers at any given time where the maximum sentence is two years, but that period can be extended to seven years by the authorities.
Chinese government enacted “Anti-Drug Law of 2008” by amending their old drug laws to a more “people centered” approach where the offenders were to be sent to professional detox centers and thereafter to community-based rehabilitation centers.
However, guards at the detention centers use electric prods, and the detainees are not provided with adequate meals and are allowed to shower only once a month. Some are forced to work up to 18 hours a day without pay. Other detainees work at chicken farms or shoe factories that are contracted with the local police.
Those incarcerated are detained without trials, and the Chinese law does not define mechanisms where people can appeal their detention. Furthermore, the law does not have means to ensure “evidence-based drug dependency treatment.”
Joseph Amon of Human Rights Watch said, “They call them detoxification centers, but…[t]he basic concept is inhumane and flawed.”
Criticizing the Chinese law which subjects suspected drug users to cruel and arbitrary treatment, Amon added, “The Chinese government has explained the law as a progressive step towards recognizing drug users as ‘patients,’ but they’re not even being provided the rights of ordinary patients.”
Due to this “flawed model” of drug rehabilitation, Amon also said, “[P]eople who want to get off drugs have very, very few choices. No one is going to sign up for three years of forced labor and detention as a strategy for reducing their drug use.”
One Chinese drug offender confessed, “I’ve tried to get clean and have been in compulsory labor camps more than eight times. I just cannot go back to a forced labor camp – [it is] a terrifying world where darkness knows no limits.”
Amon said, “The Chinese government should stop these abuses and ensure that the rights of suspected drug users are fully protected…Warehousing large numbers of drug users and subjecting them to forced labor and physical abuse is not ‘rehabilitation.’”
For more information, please see:
Human Rights Watch – China: Drug ‘Rehabilitation’ Centers Deny Treatment, Allow Forced Labor – 6 January 2010
NYT – China Turns Drug Rehab Into a Punishing Ordeal – 7 January 2010
Radio Free Asia – China’s Drug Treatment Slammed – 6 January 2010
