Seven months after having been sentenced I have decided to write again some of the things that I think are unknown to some, as I am the one that is here. A 31 year old Venezuelan single mother, arrested in September 2016 at the Hong Kong international airport. Exactly one year and six months I have decided to face the hard reality that awaited me.
I am not the only one in this situation, there are many others that I have met here and all agree that the job offered to us by people that take full advantage of the economic situation in our county. I am certain that all of us (including male prisoners) only accepted the job for this reason: poverty – lack of money, lack of opportunities to apply for decent jobs….
Doctors, hair stylists, secretaries, students, bricklayers, among others here, we all come from humble homes. The majority are single mothers and have children aged between 3 to 18 years of age or even older and all these children are now without the most valuable things in their lives: their mums and dads.
You can only communicate with your family by phone once a month and for only 10 minutes…
In August 2017, after 11 months of uncertainty I was finally sentenced to 24 years and six months in prison, and after a few deductions my sentence was reduced to 15 years and six months of which depending on my good behavior I could be leaving in January 2027 but if not then in 2032. Can you imagine? I will miss nine years of my three children’s life—though absent only physically because my my mind is with them always.
Here is not ideal but at least I have my life and health thanks to God. I must admit that I have made the most of this situation and I now speak two languages on top of my mother tongue. In this prison I can study, work and learn about a few things.
We suffer discrimination daily from some. Only because we are not Hong Kong people, we need to wait until 2020 to see the dentist, it is expensive so meanwhile we take painkillers to alleviate the pain even when it may be an emergency. You can only communicate with your family once a month by phone and for only 10 minutes, do you think that in 10 minutes you can share what happened in one month? It’s unfair, right? We pay for the phone calls with our own money, we work for a small salary, we are like “ROBOTS”, machines in Hong Kong’s great enterprise: Prisons!
The most painful things of it all is to be apart from my family, that drug trafficking does not end and to know that new Venezuelans keep arriving, it’s so sad! All my efforts in trying to alert other Venezuelans and Latin Americans have not been in vain, the percentage of those that accept trafficking have decreased. But the “lucky” ones as those who come to Hong Kong, for in some other Asian countries they face a death sentence, what are we doing? What else do we want to lose or sacrifice? Is it worth risking it for someone else?
Venezuelan and other latin american’ friends: Here, sentences for trafficking are long as for murderers, do not risk it. Your freedom and being around family is priceless, do not accept to be a mule, you will end up in prison. IF IT WERE EASY THEY WOULD NOT USE US, DON’T YOU THINK? DO NOT LISTEN TO THEIR FALSE PROMISES…
SAY NO TO DRUG TRAFFICKING, NO MORE MULES, SHARE THIS INFO…
NO MORE MULES IN HONG KONG!!
Another Venezuelan woman in a Hong Kong prison.
8 March 2018
Note: This letter has been translated from its original language in Spanish. You can read the source in this post.