Vietnam: Torture and forced labour in drug rehab centres

Government-run drug detention centres, mandated to "treat" and "rehabilitate" drug-users, are little more than forced labour camps where drug-users work six days a week processing cashews, sewing garments or manufacturing other items.

The 126-page report, "The Rehab Archipelago: Forced Labour and Other Abuses in Drug Detention Centres in Southern Vietnam," documents the experiences of people confined to 14 detention centres under the authority of the Ho Chi Minh City government. Refusing to work, or violating centre rules, results in punishment that in some cases is torture. Quynh Luu, a former detainee who was caught trying to escape from one centre, described his punishment: "First they beat my legs so that I couldn't run off again. Then they shocked me with an electric baton and kept me in the punishment room for a month."

Tens of thousands of men, women and children are being held against their will in government-run forced labour centers in Vietnam. This is not drug treatment, the centres should be closed, and these people should be released.

International donor support to the centres, and to the Vietnamese government's Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs, which oversees them, can have the perverse impact of enabling the government to continue to detain HIV-positive drug-users. Under Vietnamese law, HIV-positive detainees have a right to be released if drug detention centres cannot provide appropriate medical care.

Vietnam's system of forced labour centres for drug -users has its origin in "re-education through labour" camps for drug-users and sex workers established following the victory of North Vietnam in 1975. The centres received renewed political support in the mid-1990s during a government campaign to eradicate so-called "social evils", including drug use. As Vietnam's economy has modernised, the system has expanded. In 2000, there were 56 such centres across Vietnam; by early 2011, there were 123.

People are commonly held in the centres after police detain them or family members "volunteer" them for detention. In a few cases, individuals volunteer themselves, believing the centres provide effective drug dependency treatment.

Former detainees told Human Rights Watch that they were sent to the centres without a formal legal hearing or trial, and without seeing a lawyer or judge. They said that they were unaware of any means to review or appeal the decision to detain them. Those detainees who entered on a voluntary basis said that they were not free to leave and that their detention was arbitrarily extended by centre management or changes in government policy.

Detainees described performing menial labour for long periods, processing cashews, farming, sewing clothing and shopping bags, working in construction, and manufacturing products made from wood, plastic, bamboo, and rattan. Kinh Mon, a former detainee, said: "I did cashew husking for three years. I worked six and a half to eight hours a day to finish my quota. The fluid from the cashews burned my skin."

Some detainees work for years without pay. Others are paid a fraction of the minimum wage, and centre management deducts food, lodging and so-called "management fees" from their pay. At the end of their detention, some detainees said, their families had to pay the centres for debts that centre officials claimed the detainees owed.

Since 1994, international donors have worked with these centres on "capacity building", including training centre staff in forms of drug dependency treatment and support for HIV interventions. The HIV prevalence of detainees is unknown, but has been variously reported at between 15 and 60 per cent. Most centres offer no anti-retroviral treatment or even basic medical care.

Some former detainees provided Human Rights Watch with the names of companies that allegedly had products processed in the centres. However, the lack of transparency or any publicly accessible list of companies that have contracts with these government-run detention centres made corroborating the involvement of companies difficult. Often, detainees did not know the brand or company owning the products they worked on. Human Rights Watch is investigating companies that may have contracted with the detention centres.

Among the companies whose goods some detainees said they were forced to process were two Vietnamese companies, Son Long JSC, a cashew processing company, and Tran Boi Production, which manufactures plastic goods. Human Rights Watch sent correspondence to both companies a number of times seeking their comments, but neither company replied.

Vietnamese media reports over the past decade identify both Son Long JSC and Tran Boi Productions as producing products with detention centre detainees. In 2011, the director of one detention centre told a foreign journalist, with whom Human Rights Watch met, that Son Long JSC oversaw cashew processing within his centre.

Forced labour is not treatment, and profit-making is not rehabilitation. Donors should recognise that building the capacity of these centres perpetuates injustice, and companies should make sure their contractors and suppliers are not using goods from these centres.

Human Rights Watch called on the government of Vietnam to close down these centres permanently and to conduct an immediate, thorough and independent investigation into torture, ill treatment, arbitrary detention and other abuses in the country's drug detention centres. The government should also make public a list of all companies that have contracts with detention centres for processing or manufacturing products.

Donors, and their implementing agencies, should review their assistance to detention centres and ensure that no funding is supporting policies or programmes that violate international human rights law.

Companies working with Vietnam's drug detention centres, including through sub-contractors, should end such relationships immediately.

People who are dependent on drugs in Vietnam need access to community-based, voluntary treatment. Instead, the government is locking them up, private companies are exploiting their labour, and international donors are turning a blind eye to the torture and abuses they face.

 "The Rehab Archipelago: Forced Labour and Other Abuses in Drug Detention Centres in Southern Vietnam" is available at: http://hrw.org/embargo/node/101356?

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Joe Amon is health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch.