 It is my great pleasure to introduce Bikash Gurang, also a dear friend, a close colleague and co-activist in this fight. Bikash is a pro-drug user activist. As a person dependent on drugs, he is dedicated to the right of self-determination in any individual's decision to use drugs recreationally and dependently without any criminal sanctions or coerced treatment. Bikash currently works for the Asian network of people who use drugs as the program and communication manager at their regional office in Bangkok. Bikash, you have the floor. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Anne, for being here with us to chair this session and thank you, HRI Naomi, for creating this platform and for having me to speak here on behalf of the Asian network of people who use drugs. Every time I have spoken at some kind of events or sessions, I speak believing that my role is to speak the truth, may it be or no matter how much pleasant the truth is or how much brutal the truth might be. I have the chance to speak in a few sessions, events and even the closing session of past harm reduction conferences, but this is the first time I'm speaking at a plenary session. Actually, I must admit that I'm nervous and I think I should be nervous because the thing that I'm trying to say here is very important to me and the community I represent, so this is a very important issue and that is why I'm nervous. In December 2018, when we were trying to decide about the topic, my title of my presentation is Networks of Criminalized Communities and it felt like there is a lot to say about this topic and maybe just a 15 minutes allocation would not be enough and maybe there should be a dedicated session kind of a feeling was there, and I was nervous as I began to look into it and I could not find that many, many things to present actually, so stating the obvious truths was fine but I also wanted to tell something new, exciting and beneficial for all of us. I talked to my colleagues, I searched over the internet and I talked to some drug-using friends or activists also but I wasn't able to find anything that you would not know about the issues of people who use drugs. Actually, everyone knew what are the issues of people who use drugs, that is how I felt and I thought maybe not finding anything is also itself a finding and I would actually present what I did not find actually. I joined and put in March 2016, I was just starting to learn about my roles and how a network and a regional network would operate function and within less than three months on 30 June 2016 they joined his office and launched his nationwide water and drugs campaign. Everyday people suspected of using or selling drugs including many children were being murdered and we did not know how we had been losing a small part of us everyday. It was heartbreaking to read news that more than 30 people had been killed in just one night, no wonder what happened to the preliminary investigation opened by the International Criminal Court. Over 13,000 people were reported murdered when ICC investigation was opened and now we are already at 27,000. In the initial days, I encouraged myself thinking I got this job right before it all started because I am meant to fight against it and because I can do it. However, we believe we did fight back with whatever ammo we had at our disposal. We were angry and we were also scared. Whatever anyone did to stop those murders of our friends and families, Duterte's war on drugs continues and his footsteps has been followed by other countries like Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and others in South and Southeast Asian region. I did not realize when that encouraging feeling of I am meant to be had already been replaced by a question, what if people continue to die because I am incapable of fighting back. Extrajudicial killing is only one of many forms of violence that our communities face everyday. Since it is the most serious form, often other human rights violations may be perceived small or negligible. The compulsory detention centers for drug users, CCDU, that detained over 450,000 people in 948 facilities in only seven countries of Southeast Asian region is something that has still not been addressed. There are similarly private or NGO run rehab centers that operate because there is this huge profit in this business and because our society and government would call rehab or treatment center as a noble venture because people who use drugs are criminalized and stigmatized. These private rehab centers take advantage of the fact that either no one would believe what a drug user would have to tell or drug users would hardly speak up due to the fear of being arrested by police or the fear of being kidnapped by a private rehab again. Last week or the week before I attended a meeting to discuss priorities and strategies to address ongoing human rights violations among people who use drugs. We were told to our face that because the primary focus of the project will be human rights, which is why they found it more strategic to replace and put with national human rights mechanisms and we were told that please feel free to let us know if any specific right issues has been happening or has to be addressed throughout the project implementation. We responded and killed such argument right away but by bringing up this case I'm only trying to underscore the fact that community networks are till this date not recognized and respected by many as human rights or drug policy reform related organizations. We shall always be networks of criminals in need for capacity building for 10 years and even more always. I asked the regional coordinator of ANPORT with my boss how many people have departed from his or her job at ANPORT with the proper farewell. It was a very simple question except not a single employee had a happy ending in the last 10 years. Some left with disappointments for the team while some might have been perceived as a disappointment by the team. Some had to leave unexpectedly but due to their serious health conditions partly as a result of the nature of the work we do or issues we engage with emotionally. These are cases in which there are cases in which some just disappeared without communication also. So in the last 10 years there was not a single employee that had proper farewell while leaving the organization. Many of us will not delay in assuming that these situations happened to the drug-using communities and their organizations because they do not have the capacity or because people who use drugs fight with each other all the time. When a single media correspondent or any human rights worker is threatened then we all know how big issue that is. When same happens to an activist from drug-using communities then it's like nothing. There are some very good close friends who would do something about it. Else it's just a forgotten issue. Even worse is the fact that when our friends reached out to some of these famous human rights defenders to discuss the extrajudicial killings of people who use drugs sadly they were turned down by saying the extrajudicial killings of people. People who use drugs are not the priority right now. The priority is Syria. Such a coward who has all the answers to justify our community's lives. This is what it looks like and feels like to run a network with the full disclosure of who we are as people who use drugs. Only to launch one single advocacy I had to go back Nepal, launch it and then wait for a week to just see if the threats are real. Like the original human rights defenders we also often receive threats. There is no support system, no occupational safety and security-related accountability for anyone. There is just blame, just blame to our communities that every single thing that happens to us is because of our drug-using behaviors. We are people who use drugs. If we are criminals then what is the word that would describe Duterte's action? If we are to be called as a brain-dissist person then how do we define Duterte, Fedetob, whatever, whatever, everyone? Our being is criminalized in some cases and it is frustrating to see political correctness everywhere. I did not know what and how to tell a meeting participant early this month who suggested me to say legal barriers instead of war on drugs simply because she thought I might piss off their chief guest. I made all these human rights crises that hardly anyone would want to discuss about. There are many people who are far more concerned about harm reduction services for HIV prevention, creating enabling environment or removing legal barriers. It feels like some are simply pretending to be looking for answers because they do not want to engage in the real issues. It really does not make any sense to see so much focus and so much resources invested on biomedical interventions. I'm not saying that harm reduction investment has been adequate. No, it is not adequate. In fact, it was ASRI's report which has already like shown that only 13% of the total need for harm reduction funding has been covered so far. In a study conducted for the period 2014-2016 allocation period of the global fund, of the total allocated fund for people who use an insect drugs at the country level, only 0.34% was allocated for advocacy work. How do we do advocacy with such level of allocation if out of the total fund, 0.34%, that is only for rallying during the world's day? This is a serious issue and we do not think it has happened just unintended. We feel in some ways, in many ways that it must have happened intentionally as well. We have lost many of our fellow activists during their fight against the current criminalizing environment. They envisioned harm reduction services for everyone but this is not the kind of harm reduction services that they had dreamed of for which they sacrificed their life fighting for until their last breath. This harm reduction that our communities have been catered, we prefer to call it harm reduction under the prohibition. They are just harm reduction under the prohibition, yes. So there is no support system and there is just blame. So there is one good news in 2019 while it's in the beginning. I started 2019 with one best news ever. The news was about the Netherlands which was on the verge of shutting down all its prison facilities. They did not have any prisoners so they had to actually borrow some prisoners from another country just to keep their prison guards, give their prison guards work for the time being. So isn't that amazing? Isn't that what we all wanted also? So that has already happened and our demand is a future where such situation does not arise in the first place when if my child or your child uses drugs then they are not killed. They are not beaten badly and locked up without any information. People have used drugs for centuries and will always use drugs regardless of punitive laws. So let's at least ensure that when someone decides to use drugs then they get a good quality form of health and legal services and they are being locked, cared, supported and offered range of services. And the other thing is this is not a world drug problem and we have been telling this, this is not a world drug problem. This is a world drug policy problem. The three UN drug control conventions that has normalized human rights violations need to be totally abolished and started afresh. We cannot keep on advocating for amendments on top of the same foundations built on set of demonizing principles and prejudices. Every year at the sessions of the convention on narcotics drugs, member states convened to hold deliberations and come to consensus which in this planet is the most perfect example of re-disorganization every year. We will see how the upcoming event, CNDs or any drug policy forums or platforms will unfold. Therefore we need to increase the investment on community-led advocacy networks, human rights programs and drug policy reform advocacy, not just stigma and discrimination. When we talk about human rights programs all we get is stigma and discrimination. Even the Philippines when they were designing their program for people who use drugs on their matching fund for $1 million under the global fund grant, they would go for stigma and discrimination while the war on drugs and 27,000 people are being killed there. So not just stigma and discrimination but purely focused at achieving decriminalization of drug use and position for personal use. This is important especially to global fund because almost 20 years of investments on harm reduction and lives it has saved are at high risk due to the widespread war on drugs approaches in the countries with high burden of HIV in context of Asia. Human rights mechanisms are not very easy to access and avail. They need to be simplified a lot more. I've been given two minutes, I'll jump. So all of this should be initiated by keeping communities at the heart of the movement. Communities have expertise gained from lived experiences and recognizing people who use drugs for their expertise and leadership on their issues would mean radical senses such as drug laws and policies reform, highest level of public receptivity and reduced stigma and harms associated with drug use as a result of prohibition and criminalization. And please do not undermine our communities or community networks actually recognize their expertise and especially those who are on the grounds who are the frontline human rights defenders who have stood up in front of the governments disclosing they are people who use drugs. And that is also one of the reasons that we have to start this. I have mentioned in my bio also like I am a dependent drug user. We have to start calling or telling this to everyone that because there is this huge problem going on with the meaning of each single terminology and how they have been stigmatized. So there is one more thing that I think is very important for as long as I remember I thought or probably we all think that most of us attending these kind of conferences are like minded people. And what I realized is also that we may not be so much like minded people and for the purpose like we may be heading to the same direction but our destinies are different. Some wants decriminalization, some are like calling for just partial level of decriminalization and there is this communities networks, people who use drugs networks who has their positions, their demands and if we are to actually really work for the lives of people who use drugs, human rights of people who use drugs. I think there needs to be this consensus that those positions or those demands of people who use drugs, they need to be addressed and the forces need to unite. Else like we demand for something else and someone much much lenient with lenient demand is going to come there and jeopardize the whole process. So I think we are like minded people of course, we are on the same direction but our destinations in the same direction are very different. So this need to I think change. This is something that I did not find actually. And the problem is that we don't believe in what we work for. We don't believe that legalization is going to happen. Even many, many within the communities of people who use drugs do not believe that someday legalization is going to happen. So even like right now in Thailand, the marijuana cannabis legalization is going to happen for the medicinal purposes and they are calling people living with HIV to register their name in order to have the license to grow plant at their homes. But none of them would believe that that is actually happening. So we need to believe in what we are doing. Else like if we are just doing without believing that legalization is going to happen one day like Netherlands all prisons sorting down with no prisoners at all had to borrow prisoners from another country. So that is already happening. So we need to believe in those kind of things and then only we may succeed. At last there are few organizations or groups that I actually need to thank because we have done a lot of advocacy works with your support especially Robert Carr fund, Frontline AIDS, the global fund yourself. And the international network of people who use drugs and there were over 130 organizations who supported our advocacy works with their endorsements. So I would not have the time to go through its name. So thank you very much for your support and we will keep on doing all this work. Thank you.