Report: China drug centres allow forced labour, abuses

Jan 7, 2010, 2:00 GMT

Beijing - China's drug rehabilitation centres are allowing forced labour and frequent abuses of people compelled to spend up to seven years in them, a US-based rights group said Thursday.

The rehabilitation centres also deny access to treatment for drug dependency to the up to 500,000 people under compulsory confinement at any given time, Human Rights Watch said in a report.

Based on research in the south-western provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi, the report said that drug users were detained under a 2008 Anti-Drug Law 'without trial or judicial oversight.'

The 2008 law was intended to ensure better treatment and take drug users out of China's 're-education through labour' system, under which petty criminals can be detained at labour camps for up to three years.

But Human Rights Watch found that new drug rehabilitation centres were permitting the 'same abuses of unpaid forced labour, physical abuse and the denial of basic health care' that were common under the re-education through labour system.

'Instead of putting in place effective drug-dependency treatment, the new Chinese law subjects suspected drug users to arbitrary detention and inhumane treatment,' Joe Amon, a health specialist for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement accompanying the 37-page report.

'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 prisoners,' Amon said.

The report said that people detained in some drug rehabilitation centres were 'routinely beaten,' denied medical treatment and forced to work up to 18 hours a day without pay.

'Although sentenced to 'rehabilitation,' they are denied access to effective drug dependency treatment and provided no opportunity to learn skills to reintegrate into the community,' it said.

It said the new law was compounding the health risks, social marginalization and stigmatization of drug users.

Drug users were sentenced to a minimum of two years of rehabilitation, higher than the mandatory six months to one year under the old system, it said.

The law also provides for an additional, vague 'community-based rehabilitation' period of up to four years, allowing total detention without trial of up to seven years, the report said.

Growing intravenous drug use in China is a major reason behind a rapid rise in the number of people infected with HIV/AIDS, according to Chinese and international health experts.