China Rehabilitates Drug Users Through Beatings and Labor Camps

by Mike Smith · 2010-01-07 09:39:00 UTC
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China has a problem with drugs. And I don't see their neighbours Pakistan, Burma, and North Korea leading an intervention to help them. Human Rights Watch explain that Chinese authorities are denying drug addicts the help they need. Instead, they're throwing them in jail, beating them, and making them endure forced labor. The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS say that half a million users are confined.

Human Rights Watch explain that a law made in 2008 to ensure humanitarian treatment for drug addicts in detention is being ignored, and when placed in compulsory drug detention centers the addicts are not only denied treatment, but are often physically abused and made to work for no pay — even worse than previous Re-Education Through Labor practices supposedly outlawed, now replaced with a worse incarnation. The HRW report further explains that the 2008 Anti-Drugs law also allows seven years of detention — no trial, no oversight.

Rather than fixing the problem through therapy and needle exchanges, the new drugs law is making things worse. One former detainee explained that police ambushed and beat him, demanded a bribe of $440, and continued to beat him until relatives raised the money. His testimony is frightening: "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.” HRW demand that detention centers close, that voluntary, affordable treatment is made available, and that the harassment stops. Hopefully the collective weight of the UN and enough noise from around the world will be enough of an intervention to make China stop treating drug-users like prisoners and punch-bags, and start treating them like patients.

Photo credit: Augapfel

Mike Smith
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