“They took my children without warning”

Yusmary, a Venezuelan woman who lives without residency papers in Curaçao, told Amnesty International about her two sons, aged 15 and 16 at the time, who took a boat to Curaçao in November 2019. They were detained and handcuffed immediately upon arrival; after a brief stop in Rio Canario, they were taken to the Foreigners Barracks. From there they managed to call their mother. After two days in the barracks they were taken to the juvenile detention centre. They were not allowed any contact with their mother for two weeks. Yusmary told Amnesty International: “They said I was no longer allowed to talk to them because they were being deported.” With the help of a go-between, Yusmary was able to arrange a visit. When she arrived at the juvenile detention centre, she was told her sons had already been deported a few days earlier – a fact that was not communicated to her earlier by the Curaçaoan authorities.

In July 2022, Yusmary was imprisoned in the women’s ward of the SDKK after what appears to be a potential case of gender-based violence against women. She told Amnesty that her partner was beating her up at home. When the police came, she wanted to file a report against her partner. But instead, they were both locked up in the SDKK. This seems to violate the international obligation to protect survivors of gender-based violence and ensure that they have access to justice and to an effective remedy.101 Yusmary said: “My detention lasted five months. It was a fight. I was praying to God that everything would be alright. It was not easy being locked up with women who had committed a crime.”102 The court ruled that her detention was unlawful because she was detained with convicted criminals, so she had to be released.

101 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, General recommendation No. 35 on gender-based violence against women, updating general recommendation No. 19, paragraph 29(a), 26 July 2017.102 Interview with Yusmary, 9 September 2022.

Text © Amnesty International 2023 – published in the report “Curaçao: Little improvement in the Protection of Venezuelans” Monitoring Report 2023