Addicts get the stick for spreading HIV

Addicts get the stick for spreading HIV
SREELATHA MENON

NEW DELHI, APRIL 2: Popular perception that HIV infection is caused by drug users has led to persecution of addicts in various states in the North-East, a conference on AIDS in which north-eastern states were participating was told recently.

Manipur Governor Ved Marwah told the meeting organised by the Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (CNES) here that the first reaction of the community had been to arrest the addicts either through the police or through social activists and to subject them to compulsory testing, compulsory drug treatment and put them in prison.

He said even parents had requested the police to arrest their sons using drugs and put them in jail. In the early 1990s more than 500 drug addicts were being kept in the central jail in Manipur, he said. He said this approach failed to reduce the number of drug users, as well as reduce the spreading of HIV infection among drug injectors.

Students from Manipur who were present at the meet said that harassment of addicts continues, but nothing was being done to stop the flow of drugs to drug users.

Sian Tung, who is studying in Delhi University, told The Indian Express that drug addicts sometimes resorted to theft in order to buy drugs. Parents use this as a pretext to get their sons arrested, she said.

The solution lies in stopping the flow of drugs to addicts and no one seemed to be doing that, she said.

Beena Lakshmi, a Manipuri research student in Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that drug abuse in the North-East could not be blamed on the availability of opium from across the Burmese border, because the chemicals used for converting opium into heroin came from within the country.

Nabakishore, a worker from Manipur, said that trafficking in drugs was rampant and women and NGOs should be allowed to work on both sides of the Burmese border.

However, participants also pleaded that nobody should point a finger at any particular country or state for either the drug or the HIV problem. ‘‘People from other states also live in the north-eastern states and are at risk,’’ they said.Mothers Association of Nagaland, which runs de-addiction centres for addicts, said the only way of fighting the problem of both drugs and HIV infection was by keeping an open mind and being tolerant.

Association president Neidonuo cited the example of the first HIV-positive person at her de-addiction centre in Imphal. She said the centre learnt to accept this fact and go beyond it by training the person to become a counsellor and the centre’s biggest asset.

‘‘The experience gave me great strength and I was able to convince the Manipur jail officials not to keep HIV-positive drug addicts chained,’’ she says.

Manipur AIDS society director Khondom Singh said there was a pressing need for NGO networking to identify and deal with common problems. He said that either the National AIDS Control Organisation or an NGO like C-NES should organise a forum for inter-state exchange.