I survived the infamous Villa Grimaldi concentration camp and torture centre in Santiago, Chile, as a baby (Nazis separated me from my parents as a child. The trauma lasts a lifetime, 18 June). My father was also detained there. He describes my captivity as the one thing that broke him down even though he suffered all types of depraved torture at the hands of Pinochet’s bloody regime. I was reunited with my mother in Sweden, where we lived in a refugee camp, and then we came to England when I was four. We moved to the US when I was nine years old.
I have not slept much lately as more immigrant children are ripped from their parents at the US border (Trump hit with criticism from all quarters over child separations, 20 June). Particularly painful are the images of the little ones left alone and crying, and the haunting looks of their shackled parents. This particularly cruel and inhuman tactic of separating children from their parents has been used from dictatorships to slavery. A sick justification was given by the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, invoking God to uphold an inhumane “zero-tolerance” law.
Paediatricians who have visited the migrant children at the border describe the effects of the separation and incarceration as “irreparable harm” from the “toxic stress” that disrupts a child’s brain development. I call it PTSD or “soul pain” that can be irreversible. We live in nefarious times. The White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, who came up with the “Muslim ban”, was instrumental in convincing Donald Trump to enact his racist border policy. Miller is but a modern-day Joseph Goebbels, or a Jaime Guzmán under Pinochet.
There is no justification ever for ripping families apart or incarcerating children. As a doctor and as a parent I speak out. And so should the whole country before we transform into 1933 Germany or 1973 Chile. I have lived the haunting trauma of this first-hand.
Marcelo Venegas
Teaneck, New Jersey, USA
• How the Trump administration can pretend the situation of caged children in migrant camps is not their fault is shocking to the core (No toys, books or playing for children in Texas cages, 19 June). Many of these children are of Native American origin. If some of the Bible-quoting self-styled “alpha males” dared to look back in history and work out how their own families had grabbed their tickets to the US, they may have a little more humanity regarding the current situation.
The truth is that the crimes committed by the US in countries such as Guatemala, not so long ago, under the flagship of anti-communism, have added to the problems of social unrest and inequality in these places, compounding the reasons why these families wish to flee. But the families fleeing and in the process being separated from their precious children are not coming to exact revenge. They should at the very least be cared for humanely while a better immigration policy is sought.
Catherine Francis
Burley in Wharfedale, West Yorkshire
• Thank you for drawing attention to the plight of young people waiting for Home Office decisions on their asylum claim (Alarm over suicides of teenage refugees, 18 June). I look after a young man in exactly the same situation as those you describe who have taken their own lives. Like them he struggles to cope with the experiences he has endured in Eritrea, in Libya and in Calais. Thankfully, his English is improving and he is now able to talk about these horrors and so gain some relief. He doesn’t need to talk about the nightmares and the sleepless nights spent worrying about the Home Office – his frightened morning face says it all.
He has waited months since his interview, with no indication of when he can expect news. As he nears 17 and a half, his anxiety engulfs him as he is aware that this represents the end of the safe time. We try to live a day at a time. He studies, plays sport, walks, cycles, goes to church, sees his friends, stops in bed – we have fun. Then night comes and the worry starts. The Home Office is a very cruel body indeed.
Name and address supplied
• It was with a heavy heart that I turned the pages of your World Refugee Day supplement (20 June), casting my eye over the details of all those individuals whose lives have been lost: 34,361 people since 1993. What a disgrace. And thank you to the Guardian for bestowing a little dignity upon those to whom much of the world has turned its back.
Val Mainwood
Colchester, Essex
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters
