The government should order the immediate and complete closure of two Social Affairs centers in which men, women and children have been unlawfully detained, and ensure an end to any further arbitrary arrests and detentions, LICADHO said today.

"These two centers, and any others like them, must be closed because their main purpose is to detain people completely unlawfully," said LICADHO director Naly Pilorge. “This is an institutionalized program of unlawful detention by the government which is morally and legally indefensible."

One of the centers is in Prey Speu, Chom Chao commune of Phnom Penh and the other is on the site of a former Khmer Rouge prison and execution camp on Koh Kor, an island in Saang district of Kandal province. Both centers are run by the Phnom Penh Municipal Social Affairs Department.

Officially, the centers exist to provide rehabilitation services to homeless persons and other poor persons who voluntarily agree to stay at them. In reality, according to LICADHO investigations, they have been used for the systematic unlawful detention of sex workers, homeless people, beggars and others who are arbitrarily arrested on Phnom Penh streets. Abuses against detainees by guards, as well as appalling living conditions, have been reported at the centers.

"Based on interviews with former detainees from both centers, and on what LICADHO has witnessed first-hand at one of them, the facts are clear and undeniable," said Naly Pilorge. "These are not rehabilitation or education centers - they are prison camps where people, who have not been charged with committing any crime, are detained illegally in abominable conditions."

LICADHO has been repeatedly refused entry to the Prey Speu center but on June 17 was able to enter the Koh Kor center despite efforts by staff there to prevent this. Inside, LICADHO found men, women and children locked in a detention room together, including: a nine-month-pregnant woman and her 4-year-old son; two gravely-ill people, one comatose; a 9-year-old girl with epilepsy who was unable to receive her usual medicine because of her detention; and individuals with obvious serious mental problems.

Two days later, one of the seriously ill persons - an older woman named Un Sopul - died in the locked room. Her death was seemingly unnoticed by guards for some hours. Fellow detainees said that Un Sopul had been sick since she, along with more than 30 other detainees, was transferred from Prey Speu to Koh Kor in mid-April. She was never taken to hospital and there is no doctor at the island detention center.

Within 48 hours of Un Sopul's death, another person reportedly died at Koh Kor - a young man who disappeared, believed to have drowned, while attempting to swim across the river after escaping from a
detention room on the night of June 20. Another escapee made it safely across the river, but a third one is unaccounted for and possibly may also have drowned.

There are also accounts of deaths at the Prey Speu center, where at least two people have reportedly died in 2008 although details of these deaths are unclear.

Extremely poor conditions - including lack of adequate food, clean drinking water and medical care - as well as violence by guards have been reported at both centers, but particularly at Prey Speu. Former detainees described being crammed into detention rooms at Prey Speu with dozens of other people, and allowed outside only briefly twice a day. They said they received meager food, often just rice and watery soup in a plastic bag handed to them in the locked room, and had to use a bucket or barrel in the middle of the room as a toilet.

Violence against detainees by guards has occurred at Koh Kor, primarily as punishment for attempting to escape, but is far more common and brutal at Prey Speu, according to former detainees. They say much of the violence at Prey Speu is committed by a group of four or five senior guards at the center who routinely beat detainees with large sticks. These guards also often co-opt some detainees - usually male adolescents - into helping to control and abuse other detainees. In addition to physical abuse, rapes of women at Prey Speu have also allegedly occurred.

"This group of guards at Prey Speu are responsible for a great deal of brutal and often indiscriminate violence, according to consistent information we have received from former detainees," said Naly Pilorge. "It seems that these guards have been given total impunity to do whatever they want to detainees, and that this has been happening for years."

Prey Speu and other Social Affairs centers in Phnom Penh have been the subject of similar allegations of abuses and grossly inadequate living conditions in the past. Each time, the government has denied the allegations and insisted that people stay only voluntarily at the centers.

On June 24, after LICADHO sent the government photographs of men, women and children locked behind bars at Koh Kor, nearly all the detainees there were abruptly released. Loaded onto trucks, most of them were driven to Phnom Penh and dumped on roadsides - a reverse of how they were arrested in the first place. However, Koh Kor has not been closed and five people, who reportedly suffer from mental problems, continue to stay there. In addition, the Prey Speu center remains operating, with an unknown number of people there.

LICADHO urges the government to immediately and fully close both centers, and to order a halt to the arbitrary arrests of beggars, homeless people, sex workers and others on the streets of Phnom Penh.

"The government needs to find real solutions to the economic and social problems which cause people to live and work on the streets - it cannot simply round these people up and throw them into detention camps," said Naly Pilorge. "It is not a crime to be poor, and the government should stop treating people as though it is."

No former detainees interviewed by LICADHO described receiving any training or other rehabilitation services at Prey Speu or Koh Kor.

"These centers are not rehabilitating people - they are tormenting them and making them weaker and sicker, physically and mentally," said Pilorge. "This will not do anything to reduce the numbers of people on the streets - in fact, it just increases the chances that the detainees will end up back on the streets if and when they get out of the centers."

For more information, please contact:
▪ Naly Pilorge, LICADHO director, 012-803-650
▪ Am Sam Ath, Monitoring Supervisor, 012-327-770

PDF: Download full statement in English - Download full statement in Khmer