"I am in contact with my friends in prison through phone, as the prison staff trusts me and allows me to speak to them. More than 50% of my friends there are still inside the jail. I keep on motivating them to leave drugs. I tell them it is your choice--if you want to get worse, it is okay but if you want a good future then please stop this and do something better. Positive thinking is important.
"I am HIV positive; I have been a sex worker; a drug user for 14 years and a prisoner. Everything about me had been negative. So my family and friends had lost hope and given up on me. But now I am in a position to help others in need. It was the strict prison rules that actually changed the trajectory of my life. I have the motivation now to help make things better in other people's lives and not make them worse. Drug use in youngsters in Indonesia has decreased now as compared to the past because of strict laws now.
"It was my peer support only who introduced me to his friend in UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) in Jakarta. It was they who brought me here to this conference. If one has the determination then nothing is impossible. If I could do it, anyone can."
(The author is the Managing Editor of CNS. She is reporting from the XX International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2014) with support from the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Tuberculosis Programme. She is a J2J Fellow of National Press Foundation (NPF) USA and received her editing training in Singapore. She has earlier worked with State Planning Institute, UP and taught physics at India's prestigious Loreto Convent. She also co-authored and edited publications on gender justice, childhood TB, childhood pneumonia, Hepatitis C Virus and HIV, and MDR-TB. Email: shobha@citizen-news.org, website: www.citizen-news.org)
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