Cambodia: Arrests soar under drug war compared to 2016

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Cambodia: Arrests soar under drug war compared to 2016

22 February 2017

By Mech Dara and Martin de Bourmont

With an additional 1,749 arrests so far this month, Cambodia’s anti-drug crackdown, which began on January 1, has already yielded nearly half as many drug-related arrests as there were in all of 2016.

Between January 1 and February 19, “we arrested 4,177 people, including drug users, and 1,917 drug traffickers,” Meas Vyrith, deputy secretary general of the National Authority for Combating Drugs, said yesterday.

Last month, authorities arrested 2,428 people, 1,243 of whom were users, he added. Last year, Vyrith said, Cambodian authorities made 9,933 drug-related arrests.

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Thumbnail: Flickr CC Luc Forsyth