Authorities are accused of taking children off the streets and delivering them to detention centres. (AFP : Rob Elliott)
via CAAI News Media
By Conor Duffy in Bangkok for PM
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) has released a scathing report accusing Cambodian authorities of locking up and torturing thousands of people a year in drug detention centres.
The human rights group says many of the detainees are children and that they suffer abuses such as rape and electric shocks.
HRW has also accused UNICEF of involvement in one of the detention centres, saying one of the organisation's vehicles has been used to transport children to the drug treatment centre.
HRW says there are 11 drug detention centres scattered across Cambodia and that more than 2,000 people are detained inside each year.
The organisation has been trying to peer inside the jail cells for more than a year and has now released a detailed report.
NRW New York-based director Joe Amon says the group has spoken with more than 50 recently released detainees who suffered violence he describes as sadistic.
"We found a pretty uniform set of abuses being reported across all of the centres where we talked to people," he said.
"People reported being beaten, being whipped with electrical cables. There were reports of being raped or witnessing other rapes and also the use of electric shock."
Mr Amon says many of those imprisoned are children and that the centres breach Cambodian and international law.
"There were two different ways in which people ended up in the centres. One was through street sweeps, where the police would detain people and bring them to the centres and drop them off," he said.
"In those cases there was no formal charge, there was no lawyer, there was no judge, there was no process for appeal.
"And the second main way was through family members who would pay the police to arrest their loved ones, their children or spouses or brothers."
UNICEF implicated
UNICEF has been working closely with the Cambodian government at one of the detention centres.
A Cambodian newspaper has published a photograph which it says shows a UNICEF van being used to transport illegally detained children to a detention centre.
Mr Amon has called on UNICEF to denounce the centres.
"The van very clearly says 'provided with the support of UNICEF and the European Union' and there was another picture also which wasn't published, but which I saw that said 'in support of child friendly justice'," he said.
"The idea that these centres are child friendly justice is really outrageous. These centres are abusive and they're torturing kids."
A European Union spokesman said he was concerned at any use of EU assets in illegal activities and has called for an immediate investigation.
Richard Bridle, the UNICEF representative in Cambodia, says his organisation has put questions to the Cambodian Social Justice Ministry over the use of the van.
"We are also concerned if a vehicle was provided partly with UNICEF funding," he said.
"The main source of funding actually came from the European Union delegation here, so the vehicle doesn't belong to us, it belongs to the government; we're looking into the terms in which it was transferred."
However Mr Bridle has resisted the calls from HRW to close the prisons down because he says it would lead to children being locked up in adult prisons.
"What would worry me about shutting down this centre is that then the only alternative that's left is closed detention and we have seen period round-ups by the police of street children," he said.
Mr Bridle told ABC Radio's PM that he would not be surprised if abuses were occurring in the drug detention centres, but that HRW's call to close the centres down immediately is simplistic.
"I understand where Human Rights Watch is coming from. I understand it is an advocacy organisation and that from our point of view it tends to see things in black and white," he said.
"We have much more difficult calls to make here with regards to the best interest of all children who come into conflict with the law."
Similar drug detention centres exist in many other Asian countries and it may be an argument that plays out across the region.
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