A quarter of Hong Kong’s prisoners are women, a record percentage biased through impoverished foreign drug mules who are deceived or coerced.
Awaiting deportation after his release, Lecarnaque Saavedra sat on a bunk in a crowded inn and described how he lost his bet on money.
It’s 2013 and she broke up. Her husband, the main breadwinner of her family in Lima, peru’s capital, had just left and she needed eye surgery.
The news circulated in the community and he said he temporarily approached through a woman who presented him with a deal: fly to Hong Kong to pick up zero-fare electronics that can be sold with a profit on the way back and receive a $2,000 payment.
“They locate other people who are in a precarious economic situation,” Lecarnaque Saavedra told AFP. “They were looking for them and in this case it’s me. “
A small figure with a face marked by difficulties, Lecarnaque Saavedra, 60, said he sought to warn others to be tempted by such offers.
She lost her spirits recounting the moment customs officials disarmed her and he learned that she would see her daughter and mother for many years.
“I think about the damage I did to my family, to my children, to my mom, because they were the ones who felt worse than me and it hurts,” she said, her eyes filled with tears.
She described how officers discovered two jackets in her suitcase that had been filled with condoms containing about 500 grams (17 ounces) of cocaine in liquid form.
Hoping to get a lighter sentence, Lecarnaque Saavedra pleaded guilty, maintains he was unaware of the cocaine and never paid.
“The bosses are free, they haven’t been detained and I don’t know why,” he said.
This story is also found in Hong Kong’s women’s prisons.
Activists, criminal volunteers, lawyers and women criminals with whom AFP spoke over the past year said foreign drug mules were a significant component of those on the wings of female criminals.
Hong Kong’s correctional service said 37 of the foreign detainees were women, but declined to comment on the reasons for this.
With a thriving port and airport, Hong Kong has long been a hub for both legitimate and fraudulent trade.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, its airport was one of the busiest and most productive in the world.
Drug syndicates prefer to use women as mules, believing they are less likely to come to the attention of authorities.
Official statistics show that a quarter of the other 8,434 people who served their sentences in Hong Kong last year were women, the global rate, according to World Prison Brief.
Hong Kong overshadows the momentary position of Qatar, the global transport hub, where 15% of those imprisoned are women. Only 16 other countries or territories have proportions above 10%.
Father John Wotherspoon, a Catholic criminal chaplain who has spent decades working with convicted drug traffickers, said the vast majority of the mules were foreigners.
“Coercion is a big challenge and can take many forms, economic, physical, emotional,” he told AFP from an overcrowded Hong Kong community known for its red-light street shops.
Wotherspoon, a 75-year-old energy package, has continuously traveled to Latin America to try to help the families of those arrested, including in the face of traffickers.
He attends drug trials that fill the daily agenda of Hong Kong’s High Court, collects donations for convicts and helps maintain an online page naming some of the characters he says deserve to be behind bars, collected in part through testimonies from others in prison.
“The big challenge is the brains, the big shots I call, discussed a lot,” he said.
Drug mules are easy prey for police and prosecutors in Hong Kong, where an early plea to blame produces a one-third relief in the criminal sentence.
Fighting a conviction is risky, given the city’s strict drug rules. Sentencing rules begin at age 20 for more than six hundred grams of cocaine.
In 2016, Venezuelan citizen Caterina was sentenced to 25 years in prison after failing to convince a jury that he forced her to be a mule.
She claimed to have been kidnapped by a gang in Brazil after responding to a fake job offer. He said he continuously raped and threatened his circle of relatives, until he agreed to fly to Hong Kong.
“They treated me like garbage, I’m afraid they will kill me,” Caterina, 36, told AFP from prison, asking not to make her genuine call to protect her family. From Hong Kong.
Pregnant before being kidnapped, Caterina gave birth to a baby and her appeal failed.
“I’ve been with other vulnerable people for many years, but this scares me,” Patricia Ho, a lawyer who helped Caterina appeal, told AFP.
“What I can’t get out of my head is that I would have done precisely the same thing as her. “
Ho said one of the big disarrays facing advocacy groups is that while Hong Kong recognizes that human trafficking is a problem, there is no express law prohibiting it.
This means that prosecutors, judges and juries rarely say that a mule is a victim of trafficking.
“By force or coercion, regardless of the words she needs to use, she was forced to commit a crime. For me, all of this fits perfectly with the definition of human trafficking,” Ho said.
Some mules know what they can bring, but they feel compelled to accept the threat because of their situation.
At first glance, Marcia Sousa’s Facebook profile looks like that of any other young Brazilian: full of selfies in which new braids appear and photos of evenings with friends on the beach.
But 4 years ago, the updates stopped.
Soon after, Sousa was arrested at the Hong Kong airport with just over six hundred grams of liquid cocaine in her bra.
She later told the court that she came from a poor family circle in northern Brazil, that she had a mother who needed kidney dialysis and that she was pregnant with a man who had abandoned her.
She gave birth in a prison while awaiting trial.
At the time of her conviction, Judge Audrey Campbell-Moffat praised the 25-year-old for a number of extenuating circumstances, adding that she pleaded guilty early, cooperation with police and criminal reports that she was a style mother to her son.
“There’s not much else he could have done to show his true remorse,” Campbell-Moffat said as he reduced his sentence from 20 years to 10 years and six months.
A few weeks later, AFP met with Sousa, who asked him to use a pseudonym to protect his circle of relatives from possible repercussions.
“I did my best to tell the judge to forgive me. I know I did something criminal, but it was for my son,” she said over a criminal phone, dressed in a beige uniform and through a thick plexiglass.
“I’m angry. But then I realized she had reason to bother me, she balanced. “
During the first years of his son’s life, Sousa allowed him to be cared for in prison.
But as he approached his third birthday, she took care of him until he could be sent to Sousa’s family in Brazil.
“He cried a lot and didn’t eat,” Sousa said of the first few weeks after the separation.
All his thoughts, he said, revolved around his assembly with him.
“I worry about the future, I’m taking care of my son,” she said.
But that long term was seen more on the horizon when prosecutors effectively appealed his conviction, arguing it was too lenient, and Sousa was given two more years this month.
As the pandemic affected air travel, the number of drug mules around the world plummeted.
Traffickers have turned to mail and courier shipments, with giant deliveries made through air shipments and sea containers.
But as the pandemic subsides, drug mules will almost inevitably return to heaven.
This means that more people like Zoila will be drawn to a business driven by smugglers and consumers who care little if they succeed.
Last month, Zoila was deported from Hong Kong, a day she had dreamed of for years.
He smiled as he drove his luggage cart down the arrivals corridor of Lima airport and made his way to the home of his circle of relatives a short drive away.
“I cried because it’s been almost nine years, now I’m coming home,” he said.
“My mother, my brothers and sisters, my young people are waiting for me. The whole circle of relatives is waiting for me at home. “