Summary: | "China's new Anti-Drug Law gives local officials and security forces wide discretionary power to incarcerate individuals suspected of drug use--without trial or judicial oversight--for up to seven years. Those detainees, often HIV positive, are denied adequate medical care, drug dependency treatment, and skills training to assist their re-entry into society upon release. Ostensibly 'treatment' centers, they are managed by the Public Security Bureau and local police. In May 2009, UNAIDS estimated that 500,000 drug users were being detained in closed settings for compulsory detoxification and Re-education Through Labor. Human Rights Watch research has found that, in addition to being denied access to lawyers and the right to appeal their detention, in some drug detention centers, detainees are physically abused by guards and forced to work up to 18 hours a day without pay. 'Where Darkness Knows No Limits' details the abusive conditions suffered by detainees in China's drug detention centers, the failure of the Chinese government to deliver on its avowed commitment to a medical-based approach to its illicit drug use and addiction problems, and the human rights violations associated with the Anti-Drug Law. The report calls on the Chinese government to immediately close these centers and develop genuinely therapeutic, voluntary, community-based, outpatient drug dependency treatment alternatives."--P. [4] of cover.
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