Group Calls for Closure of City Centers
The rights group Licadho on Monday called on authorities to close two social service centers near the capital that it said had turned i
The rights group Licadho on Monday called onauthorities to close two social service centers near the capital that it said hadturned into sites of illegal detention. Both centers--Prey Speu and Koh Kor--were used bythe Khmer Rouge, and the latter is located on an island. Phnom Penh'sdepartment of social services has been using the centers to "lock up"beggars, the homeless, children and pregnant women, Licadho monitor Am Sam Arttold VOA Khmer. Phnom Penhcity and police officials denied the centers did nothing but lock people up. "The Licadho statement is not true because normally [authorities] try to collect all the beggar children, street children, homelesschildren and drug-addicted people to Koh Kor rehabilitation center," said PhnomPenh Police Chief Touch Naroth. "I believe that municipal policy is trying tocollect those people in order to educate and train them to have good skills anda good profession." Am Sam Art, however, said Licadho had investigated the centersand found that they were not acting in the interest of rehabilitation, butdetention. "Through our monitoring at the Koh Kor correctioncenter, we saw people who were brought by the municipal department of socialaffairs and rehabilitation locked up and detained," he said. Detainees"are only allowed to go outside one or two times a day, and there is alack of medical care." One woman died as a result of poor care, he said. "According to the information that we have receivedfrom the former detainees who were freed from the center, the centers' guardsalways beat up the people who are brought in by the social affairsdepartment," Am Sam Art said. The door and windows are kept shut and people are providedbuckets for urination and defecation, he said. Some people gave bribes to one center's chief in orderto free their relatives, he said. "Some people bribe $100 to $150 to the center chief sothat they can free their relatives," he said. "On 24 June, the KohKor rehabilitation center freed all the detainees, after Licadho providedpictures of the detainees, including children, women and old men, to thegovernment, but there are five people still detained in the correctioncenter," he said. "They all have mental problems and they don’t haveanywhere to go."