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October 30, 2010
A so-called welfare centre in Phnom Penh is anything but, say human rights groups. They describe a brutal, clandestine prison used to sweep drug users, sex workers and the homeless out of sight. Ben Doherty reports.
AID money and funds from the United Nations are being used to run a brutal internment camp near Phnom Penh, where detainees are held for months without trial, raped and beaten, sometimes to death.
The Cambodian government's Ministry of Social Affairs says the Prey Speu ''Social Affairs Centre'' 20 kilometres from the capital is a voluntary welfare centre that provides vocational education and healthcare to vulnerable people.
Advertisement: Story continues below But human rights groups say the government-run centre is an illegal, clandestine prison, where people deemed ''undesirable'' - usually drug users, sex workers and the homeless - are held for months without charge or without ever going before a court.
Detainees - men, women and children are housed together in a single building - are regularly beaten with planks of wood, whipped with wires, or threatened with weapons.
Gang rapes by guards are reportedly common, and it is alleged guards have beaten three detainees to death.
But the ministry that runs Prey Speu still gets money directly from the UN's children's fund, UNICEF, and the centre is also supported by several international non-government organisations.
Sok Chandara* was picked up off the streets of the capital and taken to Prey Speu. ''They said because it looked bad for the city to have people sleeping on the streets.''
While police told him he was under arrest, he was never charged with an offence, nor brought before a court. At Prey Speu, Sok says, more than 100 men, women and children were locked into a single, bare room and allowed out for only an hour a day.
Some inmates were violent and abusive, while others were seriously ill or injured. Detainees were forced to go to the toilet in a container in the corner of the room and medical workers came irregularly. Sometimes they arrived after people had died.
The detainees' drinking water came from a fetid pond on the centre grounds, the same pond where the untreated sewage from the container was emptied. During the hour they were allowed outside, inmates were expected to bathe and wash their clothes in the same pond.
''It was like a hell. Many people were sick, people had diarrhoea, stomach aches, because they were drinking dirty water, and there were no doctors,'' says Sok.
Prey Speu has a daily food budget of 3000 riels (72¢) for each detainee. Generally, they are fed a watery rice gruel in a plastic bag twice a day.
Violence happens daily, says Sok. A guard beat him with a plank of wood when he intervened to stop the guard hitting another man.
''Sometimes, the guards just open the doors and come in and just beat people up for no reason. They know no one can complain about the way they are being treated.''
According to LICADHO, a Cambodian human rights advocacy group, three detainees have been beaten to death in front of other inmates, including children, inside the gates of Prey Speu.
Another five detainees have committed suicide; two of these were women who had been separated from their children.
Sok escaped from Prey Speu by jumping the wall and fleeing through rice paddies. He is still homeless and fears being re-arrested and sent back. ''Only the people who are locked up there know how bad it is, how scary it is. It doesn't help people.''
The usual way out of Prey Speu is for detainees, or their families, to bribe the guards - anything between $50 and $200. Those unable to come up with the money are held for up to three months, before being released back on to the streets.
Visiting Prey Speu, the Herald saw about 100 detainees being allowed out of the main building. There was no separation of men and women, most of the detainees were barefoot, and at least 20 were children, some as young as four or five.
Guards at the padlocked three-metre gates said the facility was a voluntary welfare centre, and detainees were free to leave whenever they wanted. Asked why the gates were locked, we were told it was to keep people out. The Herald was not allowed inside, nor were we allowed to speak to the centre's manager, or any detainees inside.
But a guard, a former detainee who has become a staff member, admitted violence had been common. ''A lot of people got smacked about, it's true. They smacked me about, but that's stopped now. This place is better now.''
Behind the bars, barefoot and shirtless children were shepherded away from coming to the gates.
Reports by the non-government organisation Human Rights Watch document numerous rapes, most often of prostitutes, by guards and police at Prey Speu.
One sex worker told Human Rights Watch she was raped by five police officers on her first night in detention, and by six officers her second. When she resisted she was beaten.
Elaine Pearson, the organisation's Asia division deputy director, says the Cambodian government, and the international donors who fund it, had failed to act to close Prey Speu despite overwhelming evidence of abuse. ''For years there have been credible reports of rape, beatings and even deaths in custody by guards at Prey Speu, but nothing has been done to hold these abusers to account.''
She says international funding for the Ministry of Social Affairs must be withdrawn.
''Engagement by donors and UN agencies in Prey Speu lends legitimacy to a fundamentally flawed model … Donors and UN agencies have a choice: they can continue to fund the abuses occurring at Prey Speu or they can fund alternatives.''
Naly Pilorge, of LICADHO, says evidence of the abuse, including testimony from former detainees and photographs from inside the centre, were taken to the government, but nothing was done.
''To the contrary, the Social Affairs Ministry proceeded to deny the incontestable evidence of illegal detention.''
A Human Rights Watch research consultant, Sara Bradford, who works closely with former inmates, said the Cambodian government was breaking its own laws by detaining people without charge or trial.
''Such centres are abusive, illegal and ineffective. The operation of the centres, and all funding to them, needs to stop immediately.''
Last year the UN's own Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights described the conditions at Prey Speu as ''appalling'', where people ''were illegally confined and subject to a variety of abuses of power by the staff that included sub-humane conditions of detention, extortion, beating, rape, sometimes resulting in death, and suicide''.
Despite this, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights still funds Cambodia's Transcultural Psychosocial Organisation to conduct psychological assessments in the centre. Mental health workers find many inmates are severely depressed and some are suffering psychosis, the organisation's executive director, Dr Sotheara Chhim, says.
Following reports of abuse last year, treatment at the centre was reported to have improved and the practice of arbitrary detention stopped, but in recent months allegations of violence have been escalating and men, women and children are again being jailed without charge or trial.
In July UNICEF called a meeting of concerned parties where international donors outlined the support they were providing to Prey Speu.
UNICEF's country director for Cambodia, Richard Bridle, declined an interview, but in a statement UNICEF said that it ''technically and financially supports the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation and related institutions to regulate, oversee and monitor child welfare and ensure provision of social and child protection''. Last year UNICEF gave $615,000 to the Ministry of Social Affairs, an amount significant to its operations. When similar criticisms of the Choam Chao youth rehabilitation centre emerged, UNICEF withdrew $28,000 in funding for it and the centre immediately closed.
But UNICEF says no direct assistance is given to Prey Speu.
Hagar International, which reportedly provides food on an ad hoc basis, and Friends International, whose Cambodian arm has a contract to provide vocational training for Prey Speu inmates, declined to be interviewed.
Cambodia's Ministry of Social Affairs also refused to speak to the Herald, but has previously denied allegations of abuse, saying that centres such as Prey Speu offer rehabilitation and vocational training.
''The Ministry of Social Affairs would like to reject the untrue information that causes confusion to the public … and affects the honour of the NGO partners that co-operate to provide services,'' it said in a letter.
And it has defended its policy of ''street sweeps'', removing beggars, the homeless and sex workers from the streets of the capital, saying they ''provoke public disorder and affect [the] dignity and morality of Cambodian society''.
* Name has been changed.
