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La désintoxication obligatoire, une mesure humaine
09/09/2011 | 18:34:33

"Le rapport publié récemment par Human Rights Watch (HRW) est dépourvu de fondement et dénature intentionnellement la réalité qu'est le travail des personnes se trouvant en centre de désintoxication au Vietnam".

C'est ce qu'a affirmé la porte-parole du ministère des Affaires étrangères, Nguyen Phuong Nga, en répondant vendredi à la question de correspondants sur la réaction du Vietnam suite à la publication le 7 septembre du rapport "The Rehab Archipelago : Forced Labor and Other Abuses in Drug Detention Centers in Southern Vietnam" (L'Archipel de la réhabilitation : Le travail forcé et autres exactions dans les centres de détention des drogués dans le Sud du Vietnam).

"La désintoxication obligatoire est une mesure humaine, aidant les toxicomanes dans l'incapacité de sortir seuls de la drogue à se désintoxiquer. Elle demande aux toxicomanes de s'isoler de la société pendant une période afin d'éviter les sollicitations à la consommation, de prendre conscience des dangers de la dépendance de la drogue, de recouvrer leur santé et leurs compétences professionnelles, leur donnant les conditions d'une meilleure réintégration sociale", a précisé Nguyen Phuong Nga.

"Ce point de vue de l'Etat vietnamien est conforme aux principes de traitement de la toxicomanie de l'Institut national sur l'abus des drogues (NIDA) du Département de la Santé et des Services humains des Etats-Unis (USDHHS), de l'Office des Nations Unies contre la drogue et le crime (UNODC), ainsi que de l'Organisation mondiale de la Santé (OMS)", a-t-elle affirmé.

"Le traitement accordé aux toxicomanes est mis en oeuvre conformément à la loi vietnamienne, laquelle considère que l'usage illicite de stupéfiants n'est pas un acte criminel mais une infraction administrative, soumise en conséquence au régime de la loi administrative", a-t-elle poursuivi.

"Dans les centres de désintoxication, tous les actes portant atteinte à la santé ou à la dignité des toxicomanes sont interdits et sanctionnés par la loi. Pendant la période de désintoxication obligatoire dans les centres de désintoxication, les drogués peuvent toujours exercer leurs droits et leurs responsabilités en accord avec la loi", a-t-elle souligné.

Le travail à fins thérapeutiques relève d'un processus de guérison de l'addiction afin de permettre aux toxicomanes d'améliorer leur état de santé comme leurs compétences professionnelles, ainsi que leurs responsabilités envers leur famille et la société.

"La réalité de ces dernières années montre que la désintoxication obligatoire est une mesure humaine, efficace et bénéfique pour les toxicomanes, les communautés ainsi que la société. Grâce à des méthodes thérapeutiques sur les plans de la santé, de la pyschologie, de l'éducation et du travail, les centres de désintoxication ont soutenu le traitement de dizaines de milliers de toxicomanes, leur permettant de ne plus user de stupéfiants, de recouvrer leur santé comme leur comportement social afin de mieux retrouver une vie normale. Le taux de récidive au Vietnam a de plus en plus tendance à se baisser", a-t-elle estimé.

Pour répondre aux questions de correspondants sur le fait que le Bureau de l'ONU au Vietnam a proposé au pays de réexaminer les mesures de mise sous surveillance administrative des drogués et prostitués, la porte-parole du ministère des Affaires étrangères a déclaré que :

"Le Vietnam et l'ONU ont activement coopéré dans la prévention et la lutte contre la drogue et la prostitution, conformément aux exigences spécifiques et à la situation au Vietnam.

(Zappiste: FAUX ! Ces centres pour travailleurs du sexe et usagers de la drogue n'apportent aucun traitement ni désintoxication et (l'ONU) ne les soutient pas.)

Le placement des prostitués et des drogués dans les centres d'éducation et centres de désintoxication est une mesure humaine, dont l'application a lieu suivant la loi.

Dans les centres d'éducation et établissements de désintoxication, cette dernière interdit strictement tout acte portant atteinte à l'intégrité physique et morale, comme à la dignité des personnes qui y résident. La réalité montre qu'il s'agit d'une mesure efficace qui les aide à revenir à une vie normale et à se réintégrer à la société".

- AVI

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http://www.romandie.com/news/n/_L_ONU_demande_a_Hanoi_le_respect_des_dro...
L'ONU demande à Hanoï le respect des droits des prostitués et des drogués

HANOI - Les Nations unies ont annoncé mardi avoir demandé au Vietnam de modifier les principes de détention des prostitués et drogués et de respecter les procédures légales internationales en la matière.

Les agences onusiennes installées dans le pays implorent le gouvernement du Vietnam de réviser de toute urgence la pratique de la détention obligatoire de ceux qui font usage des drogues, et des travailleurs sexuels, dans un document posté sur le site internet de l'ONU au Vietnam.

Le texte n'a pas précisé le nombre des détenus concernés, mais les chiffres officiels font état d'environ 150.000 drogués et 30.000 prostitués dans le pays communiste, qui continue de les classer dans la catégorie des fléaux sociaux.

Les Nations unies soulignent que le taux de récidive est très élevé chez les travailleurs du sexe détenus puis libérés.

Ces centres pour travailleurs du sexe et usagers de la drogue n'apportent aucun traitement ni désintoxication et (l'ONU) ne les soutient pas.

La loi autorise la détention des prostituées pour entre trois et 18 mois. Les toxicomanes peuvent pour leur part être enfermés quatre ans dans des centres officiellement décrits comme des centres de soins.

Les détenus n'ont pas d'accès à une audience ni une représentation ou conseil juridiques, en violation de la loi internationale, précisent les signataires.

Les autorités n'ont fait aucun commentaire mardi sur cette question.

(©AFP / 06 septembre 2011 13h48)

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/world/asia/08vietnam.html

BANGKOK — The Vietnamese government calls it labor therapy, a program to move drug addicts off the streets and into treatment centers, where they process cashew nuts, sew garments, weave baskets — any work that might help them get back on their feet.
But a report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch says that labor therapy is nothing more than sweatshop servitude in the guise of a social program.

Drug addicts are paid little or nothing for their work and are subject to beatings with truncheons, electric shocks and solitary confinement, says the report, which was based on interviews with 34 people who were detained as part of the program. Some of the products made in the treatment centers are destined for export to the United States and Europe.

“Forced labor and physical abuse are not an adjunct to drug dependency treatment in Vietnam,” the report says. “Rather, they are central to how the centers operate.”

Vietnam, like many other countries in East Asia, uses a special administrative system for people who are accused of being drug addicts that is separate from the criminal courts. Addicts are sent, often by the police, to rehabilitation centers rather than to jail. That is the theory, at least.

Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, who oversees the centers as the minister of labor, invalids and social affairs, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment about the Human Rights Watch report. But Vietnamese government documents in recent years have promoted the system as a way for addicts, many of them heroin users, to restore their dignity and learn the value of work.

The camps, which have their roots in a re-education system established by Hanoi after the South Vietnamese government fell in 1975, have been judged a success by the government, and over the past decade the number of drug rehabilitation centers has more than doubled, to 123. At the start of this year, the Labor Ministry reported that the centers held about 40,000 people. The government has extended the maximum time that addicts can spend in the camps to four years from one year.

Human Rights Watch says the system has turned into a profit-making network of de facto factories. The centers are given tax exemptions for the goods they produce and are expected to be self-financing. The focus of the centers is to make money, not to treat drug addiction, the report says. Relapse rates, it notes, are often above 80 percent. The report quotes one former detainee as saying that the only attempt at rehabilitation was marching and chanting slogans like “Try your best to quit drugs!”

In the generally opaque world of Vietnamese manufacturing, with layers of contractors and subcontractors, some foreign companies have discovered that their products have been created by the detainees in these centers.

One center produced mosquito nets for a Swiss company, Vestergaard Frandsen. Detainees in another center sewed jacket liners destined for Columbia Sportswear, an American company. The detention center’s involvement was a “surprise to us,” Peter Bragdon, senior vice president for legal and corporate affairs at Columbia Sportswear, said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Bragdon said a contractor had subcontracted the work to the rehabilitation center. The company has stopped doing business with the contractor, he said, and plans to give the 847 pieces stitched by the detainees to charity. “Involuntary labor of any kind is unacceptable to us,” Mr. Bragdon said.

Vietnam: Torture, Forced Labor in Drug Detention
Companies, Donors Should Press Government to Close Centers
September 7, 2011

(Bangkok) ­– People detained by the police in Vietnam for using drugs are held without due process for years, forced to work for little or no pay, and suffer torture and physical violence, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Government-run drug detention centers, mandated to “treat” and ”rehabilitate” drug users, are little more than forced labor camps where drug users work six days a week processing cashews, sewing garments, or manufacturing other items.

The 121-page report, “The Rehab Archipelago: Forced Labor and Other Abuses in Drug Detention Centers in Southern Vietnam,” documents the experiences of people confined to 14 detention centers under the authority of the Ho Chi Minh City government. Refusing to work, or violating center rules, results in punishment that in some cases is torture. Quynh Luu, a former detainee who was caught trying to escape from one center, 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 labor centers in Vietnam,” said Joe Amon, health and human rights director at Human Rights Watch. “This is not drug treatment, the centers should be closed, and these people should be released.”

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

Vietnam’s system of forced labor centers for drug users has its origin in “re-education through labor” camps for drug users and sex workers established following the victory of North Vietnam in 1975. The centers 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 modernized, the system has expanded. In 2000, there were 56 such centers across Vietnam; by early 2011, there were 123.

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

Former detainees told Human Rights Watch that they were sent to the centers 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 center management or changes in government policy.

Detainees described performing menial labor 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, told Human Rights Watch: “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 center 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 centers for debts that center officials claimed the detainees owed.

Since 1994, international donors have worked with these centers on “capacity building,” including training center 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 percent. Most centers offer no antiretroviral 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 centers. However the lack of transparency or any publicly accessible list of companies that have contracts with these government-run detention centers 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 said it is investigating companies that may have contracted with the detention centers.

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 Co. Ltd., 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 Co. Ltd as producing products with detention center detainees. In 2011, the director of one detention center told a foreign journalist, with whom Human Rights Watch met, that Son Long JSC oversaw cashew processing within his center.

“Forced labor is not treatment, and profit-making is not rehabilitation,” Amon said. “Donors should recognize that building the capacity of these centers perpetuates injustice, and companies should make sure their contractors and suppliers are not using goods from these centers.”

Human Rights Watch called on the government of Vietnam to close down these centers 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 centers. The government should also make public a list of all companies that have contracts with detention centers for processing or manufacturing products.

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

Companies working with Vietnam’s drug detention centers, including through sub-contractors, should end such relationships immediately, Human Rights Watch said.

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

Selected accounts from individuals interviewed for “The Rehab Archipelago:”

I was caught by police in a roundup of drug users…. They took me to the police station in the morning and by that evening I was in the drug center.… I saw no lawyer, no judge.

— Quy Hop, detained in Binh Duc center (Binh Phuoc province) for four years

People did refuse to work but they were sent to the disciplinary room. There they worked longer hours with more strenuous work and if they balked at that work; then they were beaten. No one refused to work completely.

— Ly Nhan, detained in Nhi Xuan center (Ho Chi Minh City) for four years

I had a quota of 30 kilos [of cashews] a day and worked until they were done. If you refused to work you were sent to the punishment room and after a month [there] you agreed to work again.

— Vu Ban, detained in Center No. 2 (Lam Dong province) for five years

Work was compulsory. We produced bamboo furniture, bamboo products, and plastic drinking straws. We were paid by the hour for work eight-hour days, six days a week.

— Luc Ngan, a child when first detained for three-and-a-half years at Youth Center No. 2 (Ho Chi Minh City)

On paper I earned [VND] 120,000 a month but they took it. The center staff said it paid for our food and clothes.

— Quynh Luu, who spent over five years in detention in Center No. 3 (Binh Duong province)

If we opposed the staff they beat us with a one-meter, six-sided wooden truncheon. Detainees had the bones in their arms and legs broken. This was normal life inside.

— Dong Van, detained for over four years in Center No. 5 (Dak Nong province)

[The solitary confinement cell] was about two meters by two meters with a small seat and small window. A toilet hole led outside. You could be held alone there for one to four months.

— Cho Don, a woman detained for five years in Phu Van center (Binh Phuoc province)

No one refused to work by not going to the workplace. Everyone worked, including the children.

— Thai Hoa, detained at Youth Center No. 2 (Ho Chi Minh City) for five years