In Hong Kong, a quarter of those in detention are women. A proportion unparalleled in the world, fueled by the many “mules” who, mainly from poor backgrounds in Latin America, have tried to smuggle drugs into the territory, often under duress or after being tricked into their countries of origin.
Recently released, Ms. Lecarnaque Saavedra, 60, received AFP as she awaited deportation from Hong Kong.
Sitting on her bunk bed in a shabby boarding house, she described how she took a bet to win some easy money, and lost it.
It was 2013 and she was penniless. Her husband, breadwinner, had left her and she needed eye surgery. The information began to circulate in his district of Lima.
One day, a woman approached her and offered her a deal: fly to Hong Kong to pick up duty-free electronics, and bring them back to Peru where they would be sold. A service for which she would receive 2,000 dollars on her return.
“They are looking for people who are in a precarious economic situation”, tells AFP this woman with a face marked by hardship. “And here is me they found.”
Her poised voice only cracks once, when she recalls the moment customs officers intercepted her at the airport and she realized she wouldn’t see her daughter and mother again for years.
In his suitcase, the agents discovered two jackets filled with condoms containing just over 500 grams of cocaine in liquid form.
“I thought about the harm I did to my family, to my children, to my mother, because they suffered even more than me and it hurts me,” she says, her eyes filled with tears.
Hoping for a lighter sentence, she pleaded guilty at trial, though she maintains she was unaware there was cocaine in her suitcase, and she never received the lower payment. “The chiefs are free, they have never been arrested”.
A story that is all too familiar in the women’s wards of Hong Kong prisons.
– A quarter of women among prisoners –
Of the 8,434 people incarcerated in the territory last year, 25% were women, a record proportion according to the organization World Prison Brief.
Qatar, another major global transport hub, ranks second with 15%. Worldwide, the proportion of women in the prison population exceeds 10% in only 16 countries.
The Hong Kong Correctional Service reports that 37% of foreign national inmates are women, while refusing to explain the reasons for such a high percentage.
But activists, prison visitors, lawyers and female prisoners interviewed by AFP over the past year all say a very high proportion of women incarcerated in the city are “mules”.
With its privileged geographical location in the heart of Asia and its hyperactive port and airport, at least before the pandemic, Hong Kong has always been a hub for all types of commerce, both legal and illegal.
Drug traffickers prefer to use women as “mules”, believing that they will attract less attention from the authorities.
Father John Wotherspoon, a Catholic prison chaplain who has spent decades encountering “mules”, says the majority of these drug couriers are vulnerable women who have been manipulated.
“Coercion is a big problem. It can take many forms: economic, physical, emotional,” the energetic man explains in his cramped office in a seedy part of Hong Kong.
The 75-year-old priest has traveled to Latin America several times to help the families of those arrested in Hong Kong.
He attends the drug trafficking trials that take place each week in the High Court of Hong Kong, collects donations to help the condemned, and participates in the animation of a website which includes the names of the individuals who, according to him , are the ones who really should be in prison, according to the testimonies of the inmates.
“The real problem is the brains. We don’t talk a lot about big fish,” he laments.
– Easy prey –
Easy prey for drug traffickers, the “mules” are also easy prey for the police and prosecutors in Hong Kong, where pleading guilty generally reduces one’s sentence by a third.
Conversely, contesting an accusation is a risky bet in a territory where the penalties for drug trafficking are draconian. Transporting more than 600 grams of cocaine is punishable by a minimum sentence of twenty years in prison.
Caterina, a Venezuelan, was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2016 after failing to convince a jury that she had transported drugs under duress. She claims she was kidnapped and raped by a gang in Brazil after responding to a bogus job offer, and had to agree to go to Hong Kong after threats against her family.
“They treated me like trash, I was afraid they would kill me,” Caterina, who refuses to disclose her real name to protect her family, told AFP in a Hong Kong prison.
Pregnant before her abduction, Caterina, 36, gave birth to a baby boy in prison. Then his appeal was dismissed.
“I have worked for many years with vulnerable people, but this is a case that sticks in my throat,” Patricia Ho, a lawyer who defended Caterina during the appeal trial, told AFP. “What I can’t get out of my head is that I would have done the exact same thing in his place.”
According to Mr Ho, one of the main problems faced by lawyers is that there is no law specifically punishing human trafficking in Hong Kong. As a result, prosecutors, judges and juries rarely admit that a “mule” could have been the victim of this trafficking.
“By force or by coercion – whatever words you want to use – she was coerced into committing a crime. To me, this all fits the definition of human trafficking very much,” says Mr. Ho by evoking the case of Caterina.
Other “mules” know full well what they are carrying, but feel compelled to take the risk to get out of poverty or for other reasons.
– Mother and son separated –
At first glance, 25-year-old Marcia Sousa’s Facebook page looks like any other young Brazilian’s, filled with selfies, beach parties and hairstyle photos.
But four years ago, her page abruptly stopped updating: Marcia Sousa was arrested at Hong Kong airport with 600 grams of liquid cocaine in her bra.
Later, in court, she said that she was from a poor family in northern Brazil, that her mother needed dialysis, that she had recently become pregnant and that the child’s father l had given up.
She gave birth while on remand. During her trial, the judge granted her mitigating circumstances, noting that she had pleaded guilty, cooperated with the police and that she was a model mother for her son in prison.
Marcia Sousa, who faced the minimum sentence of 20 years, was sentenced to 10 years and 6 months in prison.
AFP met the young woman – who uses a pseudonym to protect her family in Brazil – in the prison where she is serving her sentence.
“I did my best to convince the judge to pardon me. I know I committed a criminal act, but I did it for my son,” she said into the telephone receiver in the visiting room, dressed in a beige prison uniform, behind a thick plexiglass wall.
“I was angry. But afterwards, I realized that she was right to condemn me. She showed restraint,” she continues.
Ms. Sousa was able to care for her son in prison for his first three years. Then, a few days before her third birthday, the child was taken from her. He is now living with a foster family, waiting to join his mother’s family in Brazil.
“He cried a lot and he didn’t eat anymore,” says Ms. Sousa, referring to the first weeks after the separation. She says, however, that her whole life now revolves around when they can find each other.
A prospect that moved away when the Court of Appeal, seized by the prosecutors, found his sentence too light and increased it by two years.
The Covid-19 pandemic and the sudden slowdown in air traffic has led to a sharp drop in the use of “mules” to ferry drugs around the world.
Traffickers have largely replaced them with shipments by parcel post, or by container for large quantities.
But as the world learns to live with the virus and activity restarts, the mules will inevitably return to service, and other women like Zoila Lecarnaque Saavedra will see their lives shattered.
Last month, Ms. Lecarnaque Saavedra finally left Hong Kong, a day she had dreamed of for years.
An AFP reporter met her pushing her luggage cart on arrival at Lima airport, looking beaming as she made her way to her family home, a few miles away.
“I’m crying because it’s been almost nine years, now I’m going home,” she said. “My mother, my brothers and sisters, my children are waiting for me. The whole family is waiting for me at home”.
