Cambodians beaten, raped and killed at illegal detention camp funded by UN

Detainees and guards at Cambodia's Prey Speu detention centre. The government says it is a welfare centre, but human rights groups claim it is a brutal, clandestine, prison. Photograph: Ben Doherty

'Undesirables' are swept from the streets before being detained without trial, say human rights groups

Thursday 28 October 2010

Ben Doherty in Phnom Penh

guardian.co.uk

UN funding is being used to run a brutal internment camp for the destitute in Cambodia where detainees are held for months without trial, raped and beaten, sometimes to death, former inmates have told the Guardian.

The Prey Speu facility, 12 miles from Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, is officially described as a "social affairs centre" offering education and healthcare to vulnerable people.

But human rights groups and former inmates say the centre is an illegal, clandestine prison, where people deemed "undesirable" by the government – usually drug users, sex workers and the homeless – are held for months without charge.

Men, women and children are housed together in a single building and are regularly beaten with planks, whipped with wires or threatened with weapons, according to witnesses.