Al Jazeera

201491563436799734_20More than 400 Vietnamese drug addicts have escaped from a rehabilitation centre where they had been detained so that they could receive compulsory treatment, a local official said.
The detainees, many wielding sticks, broke free from the centre near the port city of Haiphong in northeast Vietnam late on Sunday.
“More than 400 inmates fled after breaking the door and threatened the guards of the centre with sticks,” Nguyen Huy Hoang, an official from Thuy Nguyen district – where the centre is located – told the AFP news agency.
US-based Human Rights Watch has denounced the conditions in Vietnam’s rehabilitation centres and a UN expert has recommended they be closed.
HRW says the treatment centres are “forced labour camps” where inmates do not receive proper healthcare and are often subjected to physical violence.

One thought on “Al Jazeera

  1. shinichi Post author

    Drug addicts stage mass breakout in Vietnam

    More than 400 people break free in country where UN has recommended drug rehabilitation
    centres be closed.

    Al Jazeera

    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/09/drug-addicts-stage-mass-breakout-vietnam-201491561531104799.html

    Previous breakouts

    The communist government enforces the compulsory treatment programme for the country’s estimated 140,000 drug addicts.

    Addicts must undergo two-year spells of “rehabilitation” in what the government describes as an effort to bring down rising rates of drug use, especially among young people.

    The treatment period at the Gia Minh centre, where the breakout took place, was recently extended to three years, Hoang said.

    The centre has also reduced the amount of money spent on food, prompting complaints from the addicts, he added.

    In May 2010 and April 2012, detainees at similar addiction treatment centres in Haiphong also staged breakouts.

    Addicts are mostly forced to report to the centres by their family or local authorities, but they are not considered criminals.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to shinichi Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *