UN team cautioned against military running rehab camps

Sri Lanka’s military should not be involved in administering rehabilitation programmes and any such programmes must be in the hands of professionally trained medical personnel, a United Nations Working group on arbitrary detention, has recommended following a visit to Sri Lanka in December 2017.

The group visited Kandakadu and Senapura Treatment and Rehabilitation Centres, and said it considers that although the two centres, benefit from more relaxed rules than a regular prison, are nevertheless akin to prisons in their organisational scheme (such as barbed wire fences surround the centre, heavily armed army personnel with military uniforms patrolling the boundaries, fixed schedules for activities, impossibility to freely move in and out, the obligatory uniforms for the detainees and the rules for family visits.)

Moreover, the group was concerned about the remote location of these centres, which has negative repercussions for family visits.

The group said it observed that the compulsory rehabilitation programmes subject detainees for long hours of physically strenuous exercise, there is no individualised assessment conducted to determine the most appropriate treatment programme and the overall delivery of the programme is not carried out by the specifically trained medical professionals.

The security and overall regime in the two camps is ensured by the army and the programmes are overseen by counsellors who have received limited training on management of drug dependence from a medical standpoint.

The group observed that the detainees had no legal representation, impairing their ability to contest the confinement in rehabilitation centres or to obtain release at the end of the programme.