CHINA’S police and public security forces are driving drug users away from community-based prevention services and denying them access to HIV treatment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released last week.
CHINA’S police and public security forces are driving drug users away from community-based prevention services and denying them access to HIV treatment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released last week.
Although China has received increasing praise for its aggressive response to the HIV/Aids epidemic in recent years, Human Rights Watch was sharply critical of its treatment of drug users.
Joe Amon, HIV/Aids programme director at Human Rights Watch, commented: “The government has expanded prevention and treatment programmes for drug users, but at the same time, the police are detaining drug users trying to access these services, and putting drug users in so-called ‘drug rehabilitation centres’ where they are provided no drug dependency treatment and no HIV prevention or treatment services.”
According to official government reports, China has three to six million drug users, and nearly half of all recent HIV transmission has been associated with drug use.
Since 2000, the Chinese government has set up more than 500 methadone treatment clinics, with the capacity to treat 100,000 drug users. Simultaneously, however, it has increasingly put drug users in mandatory rehabilitation centres, which provide no effective drug dependency treatment.
As of 2007, approximately 700 mandatory drug detoxification and 165 “re-education through labour” (RTL) centres housed at least 340,000 drug users in China. Sentences to such facilities typically range from one to three years.
Human Rights Watch found that the detoxification and RTL centres subjected drug users to abusive, inhuman, and degrading treatment, and not only failed to provide HIV prevention and treatment to drug users, but also facilitated its spread.
“The Chinese government claims that drug users are sent to these facilities for drug dependency treatment,” Amon said. “But instead of treatment they are put in overcrowded cells, denied medical care, beaten, and forced to do menial work. On top of it all, their families are forced to pay for the ‘therapy’ they receive.”
The report called on the Chinese government to close mandatory detoxification and RTL centres housing drug users and to expand voluntary community-based drug treatment and HIV prevention efforts.
Human Rights Watch also urged the United Nations agencies and international donors to support efforts to reform Chinese anti-narcotics laws and regulations, and to advocate for the rights to freedom of expression, information, assembly, and association for people living with HIV/AIDS and organisations acting on their behalf.
China has repeatedly detained and intimidated Aids activists trying to promote treatment and prevention efforts and speak out about government HIV policies.
In China, illicit drug use is an administrative offence, and Chinese law dictates that drug users “must be rehabilitated”. Chinese law requires that all patients in compulsory rehabilitation centres be provided with “medical and psychological treatment, legal education, and moral education.”
In 2007, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed a new drug law, put into effect in June 2008, which substantially restructures the detention system for individuals detained for administrative drug offences, but has significant ambiguities.
While eliminating the use of RTL centres to detain drug users, it allows up to six years of confinement for a single drug offence, with one to three years in “compulsory isolation detoxification” followed by up to three years of “community rehabilitation”.
