Chinese drug users are routinely subject to abuse in rehabilitation centres which they are forced into and offered little access to treatment, often making their condition worse, Human Rights Watch said in a new report.
A law enacted in 2008 allows police and government officials to lock up drug users for up to seven years without trial, where they may be beaten, forced to work without pay and left with almost no way of appealing their plight, the rights group said.
"Instead of putting in place effective drug dependency treatment, the new Chinese law subjects suspected drug users to arbitrary detention and inhumane treatment," said Joe Amon, the group's health and human rights division director.
"The Chinese government has explained the law as a progressive step towards recognising drug users as 'patients', but they're not even being provided the rights of ordinary prisoners," he added.
China's ministry of public security did not immediately respond to faxed questions asking for comment. But on Wednesday it issued a brief statement demanding drug rehabilitation centres and prisons improve medical care for detainees.
The order, issued on the ministry's webiste (www.mps.gov.cn) and in conjunction with the health ministry, said such facilities must have a certain number of nurses as well as doctors and must make sure those who need treatment get it.
Many of these detox centres are based in the southwest of the country, in Yunnan and Guangxi, where drugs from Myanmar and other parts of the Golden Triangle flow across a porous and often mountainous border.
That in turn has helped fuel an AIDS epidemic, which is one of the reasons the government has tried so hard to crack down on the problem.
The report quoted former detainees as saying police often used violence to force drug users to come to the centres.
One said police beat her so badly she suffered a miscarriage.
"The police stopped me and they wanted money. I said, 'Please don't use violence. Please don't use violence.' But they beat me," she said.
Once inside, the pattern of abuse continues, Human Rights Watch said.
"If an inmate dies from a beating no one on the outside will know because the police will just tell the family that the person got sick," another former detainee was quoted as saying.
"And there is not really anything the family can do to prove the truth, even if they know a person was beaten to death."
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