“A City With No Smoke and No Sound” - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 166

The transfer of valuable inner-city land from the poor to the rich is just one part of a muni-
cipal campaign to “beautify” the city and purge it of unattractive architectural and human
elements. In 2012, the municipality branded Phnom Penh “The Charming City,” a des-
ignation that was strung up over some of the city's main thoroughfares. This superficial
initiative was never intended to improve the lives of ordinary people. Quite to the con-
trary: in pursuit of this charm, “undesirables” such as beggars, drug users, street children,
and sex workers are routinely taken off the streets. These campaigns typically accelerate
before visits by foreign dignitaries. Ahead of an EU-ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in May
2009, around 25 street people were rounded up by police and sent to Prey Speu, a govern-
ment “rehabilitation” center run by the municipal Department of Social Affairs. 43 Similar
sweeps took place ahead of ASEAN summit meetings in late 2012, when street peddlers
and beggars were sent to Prey Speu and the authorities cracked down particularly hard
on anti-eviction protestors. 44 One municipal spokesman said the roundup was necessary
to make a good impression on world leaders. He explained, “If the leaders from across
ASEAN and the world see beggars and children on the street, they might speak negat-
ively to the government.” 45
Prey Speu is one of around a dozen “social affairs” and drug rehabilitation centers
run by various arms of the Cambodian government. The Social Affairs Ministry has re-
peatedly claimed that poor homeless people stay at its centers “on a voluntary basis,” re-
ceiving vocational training and other forms of treatment. But human rights groups have
described the centers as little more than de facto prisons, reporting beatings, grossly un-
sanitary conditions, and the sexual abuse of detainees. In late 2008 Cambodian human
rights workers visiting Prey Speu found messages scrawled on the walls of two rooms.
“Detained in a miserable prison,” wrote one former detainee. “Pity me, help me,” wrote
another. A third had etched the words “Hell life,” in English, into the wall. 46
Conditions in government-run drug rehab centers, often run by the gendarmerie (mil-
itary police), are frequently appalling. Only a tiny fraction of individuals commit them-
selves voluntarily to these centers; the majority are detained arbitrarily by the authorities
or, in the case of drug users, at the request of relatives. In a 2010 report, Human Rights
Watch (HRW) described the “treatment” on offer at rehab centers as “ethically unac-
ceptable, scientifically and medically inappropriate, and of miserable quality.” 47 As in
China, Vietnam, and many other Asian countries, drug users face “cold turkey” treat-
ments backed up by grueling physical exercise routines, which supposedly help drug
users “sweat out” addictive substances. Detainees have told of being beaten for the smal-
lest infractions. For the city authorities and the staff at these centers, drug addiction is less
a medical condition requiring treatment than a sign of moral weakness that can be purged
through brutal military-style rehabilitation. Needless to say, the relapse rate is high. 48