WILLEMSTAD - The Curaçao government released the last ten Venezuelan refugees on the island last week. Not because the government thinks it should, but because the judge in Willemstad has intervened. The conditions under which foreigners without residence papers are detained are contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. "Unacceptable," says the Court.
Jose Carrasquero is one of the ten who has just been released. He is still a bit uncomfortable in his chair. The decor is a Surinamese restaurant near the house where his brother has been hiding since 2018 and where he and his wife Rosaeline now take shelter. She was also one of ten. “The Curaçao government may have released us, but we are still illegal, we still have no residence papers or a work permit. They can pick us up again if they want.”
Jose came to Curaçao with his wife early this year on a rickety boat. They had fled their home in Coro after police officers riddled the front door with bullets. “Government harassment,” Jose says. “My brother worked as a camera reporter for various media, but had to flee in 2018 for his own safety. Since then, we have also been harassed by the authorities. The shooting at the beginning of this year made us flee in haste.”
They are forced to leave their two children behind. "They traveled to Caracas with grandmother the same evening, they are anonymous in the large metropolis." It soon becomes apparent that the crossing to Curaçao is dangerous. Their boat has engine trouble and they float around at sea for hours, only to be intercepted by the Dutch Coast Guard.
Nightmare
But then the nightmare really begins. Curaçao has no asylum procedure, you are on the island or citizen, or visitor or illegal. There are no more options. Anyone who is intercepted by the coastguard or the police only faces one fate: deportation.
Under pressure from the Netherlands and the international community, the island now has a so-called Article 3 procedure under the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits countries from returning people if they can be killed or tortured in their own country. Since that procedure, no Venezuelan has been able to obtain protection under that article.
But the same criticism of the lack of an asylum procedure also leads to criticism of the way Curaçao deals with refugees. The foreigners' barracks in the SDKK prison was closed at the end of May after a visit by the United Nations International Committee Against Torture.
Penal Prison
The eight refugees who are then in detention, including Jose and Rosaeline, are taken to different locations for a day, but eventually end up in the SDKK penal prison, where convicted criminals serve their sentences.
The women are housed in the women's wing, the men in block 1. According to human rights, all this is not allowed and the Minister of Justice comes up with a trick: he sends the prisoners in block 1 to other blocks of the prison and declares that block from that moment on counts as a refugee shelter by ministerial order.
The guards are not included in that change and apply the same regime to the Venezuelans as they are used to with prison inmates. “I felt like a criminal. I prayed to God and said to him: I have done nothing and yet I am in prison. On the walls of my cell were terrifying texts. One I remember well: 'He who has never killed has no feeling'. I was shocked. When I asked if I could brush it off, the guards told me to use my own T-shirt.”
Bird
In the two and a half months that Jose is in block 1, he never sees the sun. The cells are located around the shared interior space, which is partly covered with grids, without any view of the outside world. He spends six hours a day there with his Venezuelan fellow sufferers, the other eighteen hours he is locked up alone in his cell. “Once a bird came in and didn't know how to get out. We used our clothes to show him the way. I felt like that bird. Finally, with the help of a guard, he was able to fly away again. I was not that lucky.”
There was a TV in the interior. According to Jose, it is like a postage stamp that was ten meters away, with no sound. There was also a game of dominoes and a basketball net hung in another closed room. “First there was no ball, but when there was one, we still didn't play. You've been in your cell for so long, you won't go into such a dark room again."
Free
At the beginning of July, the men in block 1 were fed up with the inhumane treatment and managed to initiate summary proceedings with the help of Human Rights Defense Curaçao and a number of lawyers. Surprisingly, the judge comes to see for herself and finds that criminal detainees are better off than the Venezuelans. "They do have a sports hall, a library and workshops and therefore also have a view of the outside world," said the judge. The Venezuelans are released.
Jose feels no resentment against Curaçao. He hopes that he will be left alone and that he will be allowed to work on the island with his wife. They had a small hamburger restaurant in Venezuela. But he would prefer to see President Nicolas Maduro leave. I hope it will be like under Chavez again. “I know Maduro comes from the same clique, but then there was less corruption and we had jobs. We could live.