People who use drugs in Cambodia are at risk of arbitrary detention in centres where they suffer torture, physical and sexual violence, and other forms of cruel punishment, Human Rights Watch writes in a recently released report. Instead of treating and rehabilitating drug users, detention centres subject them to electric shocks, beatings with electrical wire, forced labor, and harsh military drills. In the report Skin on the Cable Human Rights Watch documents detainees being beaten, raped, forced to donate blood, and subjected to painful physical punishments. Furthermore, a large number of detainees interviewed reported receiving rotten or insect-ridden food and having symptoms of diseases consistent with nutritional deficiencies.
Military drills, sweating while exercising, and hard labour are the most common means used to 'cure' drug dependence in these centres. Among the detainees are children and individuals with mental illnesses, who, according to the report, are also subject to similar physical abuses. Human Rights Watch calls on the Cambodian government to permanently close its drug detention centres and conduct a thorough investigation of acts of torture, ill treatment, arbitrary detention and other abuses occurring in them.
Skin on the Cable: The Illegal Arrest, Arbitrary Detention and Torture of People Who Use Drugs in Cambodia, Human Rights Watch, 2010, www.hrw.org/node/87692