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Witness: Driven to drug use in a 'treatment' center 
@ 2013 Human Rights Watch It was more than a year ago when police officers in a Phnom Penh park forced Smonh, who made a living by selling rubbish, into the back of a large truck. They didn’t tell him why he had been detained, Smonh said, but he wasn’t alone. The truck held about a dozen other people, sex workers, street kids, and beggars. It was two weeks before US President Barack Obama was set to visit Cambodia.
Nearly all the people in the truck were driven to the capital’s outskirts to Orgkas Khnom (“My Chance”), which is not a jail or prison, but supposedly a place for people dependent on drugs to receive treatment and rehabilitation. Never mind the fact that Smonh, like many others in the truck, didn’t use drugs. The authorities locked him up anyway.
Over the next few months, he would be beaten and tortured until he no longer felt human.
 | Face to Face With Colonel Zabadi
By Peter Bouckaert
The New York Times
Col. Saleh Zabadi, a commander of the alliance of rebel forces that seized control of much of the Central African Republic in March, is widely feared for his ruthlessness. A few days ago, the photographer Marcus Bleasdale and I accepted an invitation to meet Colonel Zabadi in Bossangoa, about 300 kilometers north of Bangui.
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 | Ecuador Shuts Down Rights Group
President Rafael Correa’s recent decree regulating civil society gave the government the power to shut down human rights and other groups that interfere with his agenda. The decree now has its first casualty.
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 | In Ukraine, Restraint Needed by Both Sides
As more and more people join the protest in Kiev, it is essential for police to use restraint and for protesters not to resort to violence. The authorities have opened an investigation into last week’s excessive use of force by police, and they need to hold those responsible to account.
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 | In the US, Louisiana Fuels HIV Epidemic
The HIV epidemic in New Orleans is one of the worst in the US, and proven strategies for addressing it are being ignored. People who use drugs can’t get clean needles, and police are confiscating condoms from sex workers and those suspected of sex work, such as transgender women.
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 | PHOTOS |  | |  | | Nigeria has turned a blind eye to mass killings – view the photo essay, map, and satellite imagery.
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| | | VIDEO |  | |  | | Dirty needles spike AIDS epidemic in New Orleans.
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