 Welcome, everyone. The name of this meeting is Legal Restrictions on Civil Society. Activists respond to the challenge. And we have until 2 o'clock, and I'm thrilled to welcome you to this session. Excuse me while I read the introduction, so we can get the meeting going. Many of you are aware of the mounting global trend of crackdowns on civil society efforts, efforts by authoritarian states to stifle dissent and otherwise silence pro-democracy and other advocates. Traditional means of repression, such as detention and imprisonment, are now replaced or accompanied by legal or quasi-legal obstacles to conducting rights work. The tools now used by authoritarian states include burdensome registration, tax requirements, and financing restrictions, especially of organizations working with criminalized populations, restrictions on online expression, especially around HIV and sexuality, gender identity, sex work targeted as pornography to speak about the groups that we work with. Hi. Restrictions on freedom of assembly, including pride parades, as recently we've seen in Singapore, meetings of organizations representing key populations, charges of state subversion and terrorism, police abuse raids, targeting of individuals who speak out to the media, disappearance of lawyers, and the usual measures. These measures lead to what's referred to as a shrinking space for civil society to operate and exercise their human rights and promote democratic principles. Harm reduction work has almost always been hampered by hostile environments and limited space. The criminalization of people who use drugs and the failure to use evidence-based approaches to reducing drug-related harms and preventing HIV and Hep C have caused untold damage to global public health, safety, and individual lives. Now this work is further endangered through the systematic violation of rights, these restrictive laws that, for example, are blocking funding and support. Today, we wanted to open up a space to come together and share experiences and ideas for mitigating the devastating effects of these measures being used against civil society. And we have a truly extraordinary group of people from around the world. We have people here from China, Hungary, Iran, the Philippines, Russia, Thailand. We have the international network of people who use drugs. And each will describe the situation that they've experienced recently or that has restricted their ability to operate and maybe share some recommendations and thoughts and just have a conversation to move the issue forward, since it's affecting so many of us. So thank you. And I am Karen Kaplan from Asia Catalyst, based in New York, but working out of Bangkok and Beijing. We build capacity of grassroots groups to advocate for human rights and support communities to build strong organizations to do that, from which to do that. And today, my first, I'm honored to welcome our first speaker, also from Asia Catalyst, Shen Ting Ting, who is a director of advocacy research and policy at Asia Catalyst, a prominent HIV and human rights advocate out of Beijing. She's worked with marginalized communities since her college days. In 2007, she co-founded the Korakata AIDS Law Center with Li Dan. And in 2012, she was the deputy director of its parent organization, the Deng Zhen Center for Human Rights Education Action, where she founded and managed an outreach program for sex workers in Beijing. Ting Ting received her MA in social welfare from Renmin University in China. Welcome, Ting Ting. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for so much for the introduction. I think that's really comprehensive. Yeah, I'm Ting Ting from Beijing, China. I've been working for HIV AIDS human rights since 2007. And first, she started working for domestic NGO, and now I'm working for Asia Catalyst, which is an international NGO. So I have an opportunity to see how the environment has been changed in the past 10 years and how that affects the work of domestic NGOs, but also international organizations in China. In China, the NGO SETA was developed in the past decade. Actually, thanks to the funding and technical support of the international community. And that time, the government has been have a key to close eye to the civil society, and that's why the NGO SETA were able to flourish in the past two decades. And there were quite little laws and regulations directed to regulate NGOs. So it's basically, it's like a great area. So we were able to do work in that space. But in the past five years, there's new development, which that the government has been working towards a more legalized model to civil society. And this does have impact on our work. On one side, we have seen that for Chinese NGOs, it has becoming increasingly easier to register as an NGO with the government. So, for example, our partners that find most of our partners were able to officially register. But for those organizations who are able to register, they have to work really closely with the government, and which means that you have to do work according to the government plan. And for those so-called organizations that are working on so-called like sensitive issues, such as human rights or legal rights or LGBT rights, it's really, really difficult to register. And at the same time, the government, also because China has been, has enjoyed the development of economic and that has seemed as well enough to support its health, the work on HIV. So, many international donors has been with Jorah for China. So, the government plot means that they will support the work of NGOs, so they deep provide funding to replace those international fundings. But those fundings come with restrictions that they put NGOs only in a place that's to do service. The government, for example, we have this HIV fund, and for NGOs working on health reduction, sex workers and NSM, each of them will have quotas, they have targets. Okay, you need to do them, how many numbers of testing this year, how many numbers of follow-up this year, and we only fund that. And besides that, there's no funding for human rights advocacy, there's no funding for legal education, there's no funding for discrimination. Groups working on that kind of work have to rely funding on international fundings. But at the same time, that the government also strengthen the control over international organizations and also international funding. Last year, we have this new law, this new international, foreign NGO law, basically it's a Chinese version of the laws in Russia that requires any international organizations that want to do work in China and want to give funding in China need to register locally. Otherwise, there will be criminal charges for those who violates the law. So it makes those who already were in China in the past 10 years, in the past like decades, become illegal because you have to register. But the registration, in order to register, there was a lot of terms of requirements, including that you need to find a government agent to be your sponsor and you need to be able to provide like a lot of documents and all these manage, I mean, the INGO's work and the funding actually are all managed by the public security. So that is becoming very difficult for many of the human rights work. My friend, Shippon, who is also from China, he will also talk about how that affects the hard reduction work. But I mean, he engaged in the process he engaged in hard reduction about 10 years ago. Actually, that time he would get a lot of support from the Open Society Foundation and other international organizations. But that kind of support is no longer there because of the crossing down of the space, including the funding. So that's the right, these days, there are really few hard reduction groups. I mean, there are still a number of them that's working really closely with government to provide service. But it's a total different picture compared with 10 years ago. So we are a little bit like heartbreaking. I mean, when we come here, we are the only two Chinese representatives and Shippon had been to like the previous conference which there was like bigger group. So, yeah. So this is the reality we will face and we have been trying to like fight out and identify strategies that we can we can continue the work in China. So I'm really looking forward to also to discuss and hear from you. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm from Beijing. I myself am a classmate of Chen Yin-Jing and a classmate of Chen Yin-Jing. I have worked for about ten years on anti-corruption and AIDS. In these ten years of work, I found that the Chinese nationality and the law of self-defense still have a lot of bad factors that cause our work to develop. It's still very difficult. But this work is very important to us. It's very important to reduce the damage of the entire human group. It's also very important to help. I am one of the founders. So today, I would like to focus on two aspects of my work. My name is Shippon. I'm from Beijing, China. I used to be a job user, and I've been involved in heart-reduction work for over ten years. So my ten years of experience helped me to... from ten years of experience, I found that the legal environment in China is really restrictive and very difficult for our heart-reduction activists to do the work. I'm really, really glad to see that many of my peers have left this field. Many of the advocacy work we have done before were not able to continue. So this mechanism has become a kind of a form of communication, and can't be used as a certificate. Once you use this certificate, it will be used as a form of communication by the public system. The police will find out and force you to do the work. So in my work, I've been working as a volunteer. I've been working as a volunteer for almost eight years. I've been a volunteer for eight years. I've been trying to work for the people and the society in the past eight years. But because of the public system, once in the past few months, when my family and I were on our way home, when we were on our way home, when we were on our way home, when we were on our way to the police station, we found out that they said that I was taking drugs and forced to do the work. Because from the police, for over three years, I couldn't do the work. Because of this, I think that some of the human rights caused some problems with the police. When I was defending my rights, they said that I was taking the police. Because of this, I was detained for 12 days. It hurt me a lot. So the public system, if it doesn't work for a long time, if it doesn't work for a long time, if it doesn't work for a long time, for the whole community and the society, it's still very dangerous. But because of the efforts of my colleagues in the past few years, in fact, the government is still very important. It has decided to launch some three-year-old assessment mechanisms. Of course, because most of the people who are working at the police station have been affected, there are fewer people in the community. So the work has stopped. So I'm here to continue the work. So I want to talk about two issues today. The first one is the discrimination against people who use drugs in China and how that creates barriers for high-reduction activists to do their work. In China, we use this database to register drug users. And the database is managed by the Public Security Department. Every drug user in this database and the information actually is linked with your ID card. So whenever you go, a hotel, you go to the train station, you take a flight, you check your ID and actually the person can see that you are a drug user and the police will come and to ask for a unit test. This is one of the two static government use to control the life of drug users. And it creates a huge negative impact to our life. Myself is a written of this system that I have been stopped using drugs for over eight years, but not long before, just a couple months ago, I was driving a car passing a toy station and I was stopped and I was asked to do a unit test. Later I was put in prison and put in detention for 20 days. But according to the Chinese law, Chinese regulation, for those drug users who has been upstream for over three years, they should be removed from the database and the police shouldn't come to them for unit tests anymore. So the regulation, the laws there, but there's no implementation and there's no one is advocating for implementation of the law. And I have been working on reduction for so many years and I contributed to the community, but myself still suffer such kind of treatment. How can the other peers can evolve in this work? Another important thing is about the drug smuggler. The most important problem is that the drug smuggler can't be brought back for use. Of course, due to the domestic drug smuggler, there are only 9 p.m. to 3 p.m. So a lot of people can't go to work. So a lot of people will bring the drug home. So a lot of police and drug smugglers will take the drug home. So now we want to continue to follow some successful cases of drug smugglers in Yunnan. The second issue is access to methadone. Well, in China methadone is widely accessible that we have over 700 methadone clinics. Even in Beijing, we have 12 clinics. But the service actually is very restrictive. For example, under open hours of the clinic it's from 9 to 3. And Beijing is a huge city. And if you have a job, how can you go there and from your workplace and then to the clinic and then go back to work? It's just impossible. And also because you can't take methadone out of the clinic, you have to drink at a site. So you have to go every day. This is extremely inconvenient for people who want to have a normal life. And actually many of our peers we are trying to keep the methadone in our mouth and take it out of the clinic because we have to sometimes we need to travel. How can we do with this? But the police treat this as illegal behavior and they wait outside of the clinic and just to detain our peers. Also, just a few days ago I was with my daughter out of the clinic and the police just question me in front of my daughter. I feel really, really frustrated of this kind of harassment by the police. I even want to do this work. So, but I know it's really important for us to kick out the college and to continue to advocate. That's why I'm here. I want to learn from you guys and to take good lessons inspiring respect to China. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Yeah, hello everyone. I'm Peter Sharosi and I come from Hungary, Budapest. I'm from Central Europe with 10 million people and it's a member of the European Union and as probably many of you know, Hungary as many other Central and Eastern European countries was ruled by a communist system until 1990. So, actually the traditions of a free civil society or independent civil society are not so old in Hungary, 20 years old and actually there was never a strong civil society in my region. When we had the change of the system from communism to the western time democracy, one of the great dissidents in Czech Republic, many of you probably know his name, Vaslav Havel said that a totalitarian system can coexist with a market society. It can coexist with parliamentarianism but it cannot coexist with. There is a vibrant civil society and independent civil society so it's kind of very much the characteristic of a free society and now when we see these attacks against civil society all these governments claim that actually they are democratic and they are committed to the values of western democracies keeping parliamentary informalities but at the same time when they are repressing civil society they are repressing something which is very essential for us to live in a free society. So in terms of harm reduction this issue is very important because most of the harm reduction services are provided by NGOs in Hungary and many other countries of the region and in the beginning of the 21st century we saw quite great improvement of coverage in harm reduction services. New needle and syringe programs were created which could reach out one of the most marginalized groups of injecting drug users who are concentrating in Budapest most of these people actually belong to a Roma minority so the stigma and discrimination against them is based also rooted in some racial prejudices and there were two large needle and syringe programs in Budapest which actually provided more than 50% of all clean needles in Budapest so that they were like the simple largest harm reduction programs in Budapest and after 2010 there was a change of government in Hungary a conservative right-wing government took power with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who is now populist leader and this government actually cut back funding for harm reduction programs it turned Hungarian drug policy to another direction they adopted a new drug strategy in 2013 which aims to create a drug-free Hungary by 2020 which is a very ambitious and very stupid target if you ask me and of course this ideological turn was also there was also some political attacks on these programs especially in the local level in Budapest and one of the local mayors used actually needle exchange programs Cape Goat, needle exchange programs and Cape Goat people used drugs to gain political power and popularity and he organized demonstrations against these programs, needle exchange programs with misled local people he claimed that needle exchange programs are actually responsible for attracting drug users to his district and they are responsible for spreading drug litter on the streets he just cut back their funding and he just made it impossible for them to continue their work so in 2014 both the two needle exchange programs had to close down in Budapest and that means that now thousands of very marginalized or injecting drug users are without any help and without any support and the attack against civil society doesn't end here now just like in China we also import the good old Russian methods to repress civil society our government also introduced the law this year that law requires us NGOs who receive funding from foreign donors or international donors to register as NGOs funded by foreign countries so it's like a foreign agent law and we have to register online we have to fill out sheets when we receive any kind of funding from international sources and each and every publication we have to put a sign that we are foreign agents and right now actually the European Union started an investigation or the European Parliament decided to make an investigation against Hungary but of course it could take years and probably also heard about the issue of the Central European University so now all these two issues are going together and the EU is going investigations but Hungary is a very good example that it's not enough to be part of the let's say the democratic club of countries like the European Union but yeah it's the question of who has the political power in your own country and whether civil society can mobilize people do I still have two minutes or should I have one minute because I just wanted to point out a few like characteristics of populist populism in Hungary and one is that this concept of the people because that's why they call populism that their concept of people is not self-organizing citizens but atomized subjects who have like a privileged relationship with their leader so that's why they think that all NGOs actually want to destroy this privileged relationship between the citizen and then there is like an anti-intellectualism as a characteristic of populism like they are distrusting science, they are distrusting data they don't like experts and actually they amplify this opposition in simple people to things they don't understand because they are very complex problems but that means that we as NGOs we should speak to the people and we should make them understand things we should make much more effort on that and then they also say that political space is an exclusive space only for elected political officials and NGOs has no place to deal with politics and to influence policymaking then they always create conflicts I think that's how they gain power that they continuously creating conflicts with an imagined or a real enemy and they're like it's like really for them when you are taking the conflict and you are fighting them sometimes that's what they want so that's also an issue we have to keep in mind. Thank you very much Hi it's great to be here I'm Mohamed Karamuzian I work with the WHO Collaboration Center for HIV Surveillance in the Middle East in North African context I also work with the BC Center for HIV AIDS in British Columbia, Canada I think I would it's sad to hear your stories I think Iran's story is compared to those is more of a success story in how you could keep harm reduction running in a conservative faith-based government and I don't want to call it an Islamic setting because like it would be over-generalizing but I would leave it to conservative so I think just a little bit of a quick background on how everything started in Iran I think harm reduction around started around addressing the issue of epidemics of HIV in prisons across the country and then after that it was built around reducing harm among people who use who inject drugs so still because back in the days 96% of the population who were living with HIV or getting HIV was through injection drug use but the modes of transmission are changing like every other place around the world so they started with addressing harm reduction inside prisons and then taking it to scaling it up to address the issue among people who inject drugs across the country but harm reduction speaking of harm reduction services for people who inject drugs it's around 15 years old and speaking of other key populations like sex workers it's less than 10 years old but I think we were supposed to talk about some of the challenges speaking of I think it's really important to put your success in context in the case of Iran we were talking about a conservative that has gone through a revolution 30 some years ago has been under constant economic sanctions so providing funding for such services is always a challenge it remains to be a challenge and it has always been a challenge so I think I would give them the credit for taking the initiative and being an example for the region but I think I could think of we can discuss about we have had similar issues both of the examples you talked about we can talk about it through the discussion but I think one of the ways that I could classify this as like a relatively working and functioning system when it comes to harm reduction where we have like a free needle exchange services we have all the harm reduction services inside prison settings both for men and women we have women only clinics centers for vulnerable women is about working with the public and the government like working next to them and trying to see that in a conservative setting the government might not be very willing to show the ugly face of the situation which is probably the case in all conservative settings so we have tried to be very diplomatic in how we release our data we publish data so and then we have tried to build collaborations with the ministries of health and with the NGOs so we designed the surveillance for ministries of health so we get to add what the research parties want to know into the surveillance system which might not be necessarily research oriented and then we go to them with topics that might be interesting for them and get them involved in research it's harder to publish but it's not I think we've made that clear for them that it's not for the sake of the publication so we've just recently been able to build a collaboration with the ministries of health and the social welfare organization who are in charge of running the harm election inside the country that we have a list of topics that might be interesting in order to improve the system you tell us you prioritize it for us which one do you want us to address first and then I think that's been a fairly functional system because it's it looks like it's working and then we get their feedback if they're interested in having their name on pieces there's no barrier to that if they're not interested there's no we're very flexible I think working with them has been the key making it clear for them that we're not going to use this against you and this is for the sake of the people and then on the other hand when you're in a conservative setting and again a face based setting addressing the concerns of the public is another key issue and I think the harm reduction by these includes including NGOs have been very successful in changing the lexicon around what harm reduction is for example when we wanted to start services for sex workers the word sex is like taboo in the conservative settings like especially Islamic settings this is like a don't say it type of thing so with sex workers I think especially NGOs and NGOs who work with the ministries of health and researchers they were successful in changing the lexicon and calling it vulnerable women which is an Islamic concept which means literally women who need help so now we're building on that aspect of Islam that says you need to help people who need help so I think working with the language and then so there are like over 40 centers who provide services for sex workers but they're called centers for vulnerable women and nobody like it doesn't flag anyone so I think speaking of challenges what I could say is that in Iran harm reduction is conducted through parallel bodies and these bodies are some of them are like related to the government some of them are related to NGOs but again I think the same thing would like a system to Hungary it's hard to be very independent in a conservative setting so like you have to be semi-independent if you want to function so like we really don't have a lot of we do have a few I would say very independent NGOs but they're really having a hard time with finding and securing funding so most of the NGO work is done through a collaboration and then the ministries of health especially try to support them through like a lot of empowerment programs but like I can speak to like something very recent is that a body like one part of this there are three parallel bodies involved in harm reduction one of them is enforcement law people who have the most power and like the most funding so like they don't necessarily collapse ministry of health is leading a more harm reduction based evidence based approach while they do not necessarily believe in that or they do not necessarily follow that I think that's been a very ongoing challenge but what we're trying to do is like to reach out to them ourselves like we go through a lot of meetings with them and try to address their concerns and hopefully keep this running I think like shutting down harm reduction is way worse than having a semi working relatively working one thank you wonderful thank you so much Muhammad and our next speaker is Ines from the Philippines if you could introduce yourself thank you hi I'm Ines from Nobox Nobox is an organization that we put together basically because people who are using drugs or involved with drugs are just not treated right it's as simple as that and a lot of it comes from the misinformation that has led also to associate people sorry to associate people involved with drugs automatically with crime the war on drugs is not new actually it's been around for a long time and in fact our 2002 law came about to overhaul the 1972 law because they thought it wasn't harsh enough so it's always been there except a lot of the people who were affected were those in the lower income communities that people don't really get to hear about so because people don't talk about it this is what the current administration had capitalized on on the misinformation and which has led to a lot of actions that has been taken against people who use drugs so the law has been there drug use is considered a crime so is possession and in fact possession when with your two other people can lead to life in prison for example and that has kept people away from seeking help and services and on top of that now where they have tried to push because they're capitalizing on this fear and just feeding into it and just getting people to be scared of people drug use this is supplemented by more and more laws, executive orders have been put into place for example you have the police circular that has led to the police going to homes in lower income communities and forcing people to surrender which they have claim is considered a success and then so there have been board regulations issued by the policy agency for example there's supposed to be guidelines on how to handle people who have quote-unquote volunteered or surrendered but these regulations are really a lot of the things that they've started to put into place are things that try to elicit more information so it's more like intelligent stuff to elicit information for example if you surrender you wave your rights and you say basically that you agree to subject yourself to drug testing need to go to rehabilitation and you surrender your phone you have to give the names and if you have photos of people who you have been associating with regards to drug use and then now they're pushing to support the administration's campaign drug testing has always been in the law but now they're reviving it so now there's drug testing they're going to resume drug testing in schools and in some they're saying they're going to drug test all students for example it's a random drug testing you have in the workplace where they have for example in a city they did drug testing for all the employees so it's so it's just kind of it's not I was thinking when you said the laws restricting us it's not so much like directly restricting us for example but it's just that creating the environment that makes it a little bit more difficult and we feel sometimes it's like an attack on all sides because they're doing it in different aspects so it's different it's difficult to address all these different things um um what else sorry I think um oh okay so I guess at the same time because I was mentioning we hear about all the terrible things that are happening but I think one of the things that is kind of missing and we want to to share is that the situation now has actually created this space where um we created a space we're able to come in and introduce an alternative source because people now the killings have become closer to home for a lot of people and they're saying no this is not the way to go but what do we do so there is now space for providing the if not this what then so in fact we have communities local bar and guys who have our help to develop responses in their communities that won't mean killing but in providing the kinds of services and in a more engaging and humane manner um the difficulty the only one of the challenges we see there is that people who have surrendered are now kind of targeted and identified so that's a difficult thing that we kind of have to strategize strategize about in doing in developing responses in the community meaning where before maybe it was the police they knew who their their kind of enemy was now they don't know who it's going to be because now people like some of them were sharing people who have not surrendered now kind of look at them as people who are sharing information so now they don't know so that's the thing and there are also people who have been forced to report show up for the supposed the programs of barangays but who end up getting killed anyway because now they are identified so these are the things that we need to to work with but at the same time when I was talking about opportunities we have also learned for example when we speak of the government it's not just one person there are actually people in government who are seeking to learn more and to know more about better responses so I think as mentioned before it's not just about saying you know you're doing what's wrong but it's also providing what we can do and what's possible so we also try to engage with people in government agencies with the policy agency we are also doing work with Department of Health for example in introducing and coming up with papers with regards to harm reduction also I think one of the things also that we realize it's about developing communications and when you say communication it's understanding I think this was brought up during the plenary earlier it's also understanding where the people are coming from when they are supporting the current administration's responses it's coming from a need and to tell them simply that they're wrong it's not going to answer their need so we need to understand that so we're also creating the space for the people who may not necessarily be sharing our views to see where they're coming from and to also reinforce what positive and the things that they are doing yeah okay alright thank you thank you wonderful thank you Ines for being in a very restrictive environment but heartening to hear that we're seeing the opportunities Mikal, welcome and please introduce yourself thank you I'm Mikhail Goluchenko from Russia working for Canadian HIV it's legal network but providing technical assistance for Russia and Russian speaking countries this talk is about Russia as many of you heard Russia is sort of first country to introduce this foreign agents law which is not true the first Ethiopia beat us big time they were first and then Russia but Russia is sort of on the tip of everybody's tongue because it went to news and I'm not going to lower it down it's really bad right I want to emphasize put emphasis on three points point number one from where it started and where we are now it started all from the election watchdog back in 2012 everybody including human right defenders and human right lawyers I remember used to say that oh it's only about elections and that's understandable because elections watchdogs they are human right defenders but in a way they are part of political opposition and therefore when the government is trying to strike back to get off the hook with foreign money to infuse the democracy in our countries that's probably right they were wrong big time because when the government starts chewing up somebody next to you very soon it will start chewing up you that's exactly what happened four years later we've got 150 NGOs who went into the foreign agents roster most of them are human right defenders and not only the mainstream human right defenders but such human right defenders as those who protect the environment those who protect wildlife and now from the year 2016 by now we have eight harm reduction service providers people working for MSM communities protecting them from HIV three of which entered the foreign agent roster voluntarily after receiving the offer by the minister of justice basically it was a threat that if you don't do it voluntarily we'll get you there anyway and you are going to get huge fine so now we have eight out of 150 those which work for harm reduction but it's not that extremely hard to be on this roster and continue working the main part of hardship behind the foreign agent law is that getting funding from Russian sources is almost impossible although there is no clear restrictions except one law another law provides opportunity for the foreign agents to apply for foreign funding but I think it's it was very important part of the decision to start going after HIV service providers to get them into the roster because of the demand for government money started growing up after foreign donors decided to withdraw from Russia because Russia is the high income country which is true money is there money is never been available for public money is there for one percent of the society less than one percent those who are quite naive for foreign donors to treat the country keep a blind eye I think that okay it's high income country and therefore we are withdrawing that was the huge huge very important one mortal blow of foreign investors foreign donors to the whole civil society of Russia is in Europe and Central Asia and now as we see other countries it's a very important mistake and we have to keep it in mind it's a lesson to learn by foreign donors not to do this and I remember the excuse was we don't want to put people at risk because now because of foreign funding they are becoming foreign agents and they are at risk we don't want to expose them therefore we are withdrawing nobody asked people right nobody asked well do you want to get money do you want to continue working regardless we want to withdraw because it's sort of becoming dangerous without even thinking that those who work for harm reduction those who work for human rights they do this not because of money they'll continue working and defend their rights just because it's their life position right so money there money with not there they still continue working without money without foreign support without foreign support not only financial but other support right they would be just even more dangerous right so that's a very important I think lesson to learn then what do we do next I'm sure that the situation is going to become worse because now we have war rhetoric coming into this whole implementation of the foreign agent law because now we have the war with Ukraine and if you if you see the judgment and the decisions of the ministry of justice against foreign agents the war rhetoric is there like some very key words which were only applicable to the war affairs now they are there so the idea is that these people are foreign agents and they are working against the Russian public by promoting something which is very bad it's a threat such as needle and syringe such as drug use and so on therefore we treat them appropriately and call them foreign agents and cut them down and so forth so it will be worse with the pace of time because this war is not going to end tomorrow and the waves from Russia are going to spread all over eastern Europe and other countries in Europe which are not that strong in their democratic systems Hungary is first but it's not going to be lost we actually see what is going on in the U.S. the strongest democracy and yet it just flipped right so it's going to be the same my point is that if we want to stop something we have to stop it at its source and sources Russia so if we are to work on issue globally we have to continue working in those old countries and then the next very short but important point is that in the very beginning I guess of harm reduction HIV services all these activities there was always an idea that we have to manage this large project important project but we have to manage them trying to make the system similar to how the business entities operate indicators different outcomes and so on it worked for some time but the most important set of indicators were always about cooperation with the government okay how many times you attended this meeting how many of your people went there how many bridges we built in order to start cooperating between key populations and the government and this created on the one hand this wide perception that as soon as the government is attacking NGOs and NGOs knew that that means these NGOs are also not going to get the foreign funding because they wouldn't be able to fulfill this very indicators very important because how would they cooperate right this one thing and so that sort of domesticated them when they talk to the government and prevented them to strike back one and it's the whole culture in such country as Russia that NGOs many NGOs many NGO leaders didn't want to act and fight back as soon as they started hearing about their fears being in the foreign agent law they said okay okay that's probably they are bad but we're not going to be affected and it's still like this people continue talking only four out of eight decided to strike back and they were successful in a way one is still doing absolutely nothing got one fine after another huge fine already and instead of fighting back in the court he is asking for money right it's stand him but I know what is behind this attitude I think it's very wrong and then the very last what to do next in order to break this whole attitude and actually environment which was created unexpectedly and absolutely unintentionally right I think we all have to think about very flexible ways to continue this work regardless the worsening environment possible ways could be one stop funding NGOs start funding people and activities and there are tons of way because we are having video record I don't want to say that but there are many many ways how we can do this forget about this NGOs it's not necessary that you have to give money to NGOs okay there are many ways and then most important I think is that NGOs what is NGO it's nothing it's just it's just sound people right people are behind NGOs how many NGOs are broken now but we still have people who used to be activists they remain they remain working without money they are still there let's continue supporting them rather than thinking about the NGOs so the very final point is everything is not that bad if we are thinking with appropriate flexibility thank you so much Mikhail and next we are on to my dear friend from Thailand and I'll just do a time check it's 140 we have two or three more speakers and it would be great to have a five minute thing so thank you Karin I think the situation in Thailand it seems like in Russia in China and many countries that is European already but I would like to focus on the overall environment working for CSO in Thailand because you know civil society organization sorry a senior human rights he said that the situation in Thailand now it looks like Thailand retreat more than 85 years ago before the change of rule from absolute monarchy to democracy something like that so that you know that is very serious on the monarchy so I cannot say it anymore because maybe I can go home so since the national council for peace and order it's the name of NCPO they take the two power in May 2014 and then they set up the national legislative assembly or NLA the NLA take a role as the House of Representatives and the Senate in two years ago they passed the law about 179 so many law and changed many things in Thailand also and also in the interim interim constitution section 44 this is very famous in Thailand because the prime minister take the power of section 44 it means everything absolutely like that so the section 44 provides a limited power for the leader of the NCPO and I think the big issue that is when the prime minister use the section 44 it means the big change is coming just like the freedom and the expression in Thailand is also limited the NCPO has banned political gathering of more than five persons since the court at least 80 persons have been arrested and sent to the military court for organizing or taking part in peaceful public gathering and also you know people has been arrested and charged with sentencing for criticizing military rule and violation the military government ban on public assembly just like the people he is a factory worker he was arrested and charged with sending and computer crime for sharing facebook infographic to share the corruption by the leader of the NCPO so that is happen in Thailand and the military unit in Bangkok and other province forced to cancellation of more than 60 political even seminar and also academy panel on political and human rights issue so that mean people who have tried to set up the seminar or panel on political issue cannot do in Thailand so like you know the criticizing the monarchy is serious criminal offense in Thailand now and I think for the human rights defender now we have a friend she is a lawyer human rights lawyer and she was arrested by the NCPO the military because she help she is the legal assistant with the student who try to make a protest on the street she she arrest and then take her to the military court so that it mean the lawyer is not safe also it not only people and for harm reduction I think my friend from Thailand Khun Noi, Khun Kuki maybe can share for the the ONCB office of control board they announced the harm reduction policy in February this year the policy that implement in 37 province and the duration of implement is February this year to September 2019 but the policy look like good but for implementation limited for practice just as when they talk about the NAROC zone service but the question is who will be pay for the NAROC zone and who because the NAROC zone is the medicine it should be by the medical so and the other is with I think important is Thailand on the process to be make a draft of drug court more than two years ago and now the draft of drug court is under the judicial to consider and I think and hope that it will be coming in soon I have to apologize to every speaker that we don't have time and I have to cut people off thank you Peter