In China, illicit drug use is an administrative offence and Chinese law dictates that drug users “must be rehabilitated.” In reality, police raids on drug users often drive them underground, away from methadone clinics, needle exchange sites, and other proven HIV prevention services. And every year Chinese police send tens of thousands of drug users to mandatory drug treatment centres, often for years, without trial or due process.

Although China has received increasing praise for its aggressive response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in recent years, the Human Rights Watch report “Unbreakable Cycle: Drug Dependency, Mandatory Confinement, and HIV/AIDS in China’s Guangxi Province,” and an article in the prestigious medical journal, PLoS Medicine are critical of its treatment of drug users.

The report finds that most mandatory treatment centres, while ostensibly meant to provide drug treatment, do not actually offer forms of drug dependence treatment internationally recognized as effective. Mostly, drug users are forced to work or to spend their days in crowded cells little different from prisons.

According to official government reports, China has 3 million to 6 million drug users, and nearly half of all recent HIV transmission has been associated with drug use. Since 2000, the Chinese government has set up more than 500 methadone treatment clinics, with the capacity to treat 100,000 drug users. Simultaneously, however, the government has increasingly put drug users in mandatory rehabilitation centres, which provide no effective drug dependency treatment. As of 2007, approximately 700 mandatory drug detoxification and 165 “re-education through labour” (RTL) centres housed at least 340,000 drug users in China. Sentences to such facilities typically range from one to three years.

Human Rights Watch found that the detoxification and RTL centres subjected drug users to abusive, inhuman, and degrading treatment. The centres not only failed to provide HIV prevention and treatment to drug users, but also facilitated its spread.

The report called on the Chinese government to close mandatory detoxification and RTL centres housing drug users and to expand voluntary community-based drug treatment and HIV prevention efforts.

Human Rights Watch also called upon United Nations agencies and international donors to support efforts to reform Chinese anti-narcotics laws and regulations, and to advocate for the rights to freedom of expression, information, assembly, and association for people living with HIV/AIDS and organizations acting on their behalf. China has repeatedly detained and intimidated AIDS activists trying to promote treatment and prevention efforts and speak out about government HIV policies.

Link to HRW