Two more deaths at Social Affairs Centre

Two people detained at Phnom Penh’s notorious Prey Speu social affairs centre died last month after being rounded up from the streets as part of the city’s preparations for the Pchum Ben festival, a local rights groups has said, prompting renewed calls for the facility’s closure.

The fatalities come three months after officials vowed to improve conditions at the centre, which is used as a dumping ground for the capital’s “undesirables” – including homeless people, beggars, drug users, sex workers and the mentally ill – and has long been linked to a raft of abuses.

They are the second and third such deaths at Prey Speu in less than a year. In November 2014, a man who was rounded up as part of a government effort to “clean” the streets for the Water Festival died there after being denied medical care. When he arrived at the centre weeks earlier, he was severely underweight and covered with infected wounds.

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