Britain-China-Immigration_Incident

http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jun/20/news/mn-42925 LA Times article on the incident

=58 Migrants Died 'a Most Terrible Death' in England= By MARJORIE MILLER, TIMES STAFF WRITER June 20, 2000 DOVER, England — When British customs agents waved a 50-foot, Dutch-registered freight truck into the inspection dock of this port city, they thought they might find contraband alcohol or drugs, not 58 corpses slumped behind crates of tomatoes in what officials said Monday was the country's worst smuggling disaster. In the wake of the gruesome discovery late Sunday, Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to combat the "evil trade" in human beings, and French President Jacques Chirac echoed British calls for a common European immigration policy to prevent a repeat of the tragedy unfolding beneath the white cliffs of Dover.

The victims--54 men and four women--appeared to have been Chinese nationals smuggled by one of the so-called snakehead gangs that take illegal immigrants from China through Russia to Western Europe, according to a National Criminal Intelligence Service spokeswoman. Two people survived what was probably the last leg of a clandestine journey, from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge across the English Channel via ferry to Dover; the others were believed to have suffocated in the airtight freight hold during the hottest weekend of the year in Britain. It was not known how long the immigrants were in the truck, but the channel crossing takes about five hours, and the truck's refrigeration unit was turned off. Oxygen-starved in the steamy heat, "the 58 who perished must have died a most terrible death," Home Secretary Jack Straw told Parliament. The survivors, both men, were recovering at an undisclosed hospital under police protection. "Their security is of utmost concern. . . . They are very important to the inquiry," said Kent police spokesman Mark Pugash. "This sort of operation doesn't happen spontaneously. It requires planning and coordination." Police and customs officials said the truck rolled off the ferry from Zeebrugge about midnight Sunday. It was one of about 4,000 such trucks that make their way across the channel into Britain each day. Customs officers had been tipped off that the driver had paid cash for the trip and that the company that reportedly owned the truck had registered with authorities only four days before, apparently with some false information. "You select a vehicle for whatever reasons, and you never know what you'll find once you get inside," said customs spokesman Nigel Knott. "Sadly, on this occasion, they were confronted with this shocking scene."

Police arrested the Dutch driver and set up a temporary mortuary in Dover where pathologists worked through the day to determine the causes of death and, perhaps, identify some of the bodies. Commonly in such cases, the would-be migrants travel without any personal documents. The dehydrated survivors told translators that they had tried to escape from the truck but were unable to open the doors from the inside, BBC television reported Monday night.

Illegal immigration and the number of people seeking legal asylum throughout Western Europe have both risen sharply in recent years. Last year, roughly 71,000 people applied for asylum in Britain, claiming persecution in their homelands--up from 46,000 in 1998 and just 4,000 in 1988, according to Home Office statistics. Throughout the European Union, an estimated 349,000 people filed applications for asylum in 1999, an increase of 19% over the previous year, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Germany received the largest number of asylum-seekers, followed by Britain. Figures for illegal immigrants are not so readily available, since the trafficking is clandestine. British officials say they pulled 16,000 people out of trucks last year, perhaps only a fraction of those who made their way into the country. Illustrating how common the problem is, Home Secretary Straw recently made a spot-check in Dover and witnessed nine bewildered men emerge from the back of a darkened truck. The business of smuggling people to Europe is at least as profitable as the one that brings illegal migrants to the United States. One immigrant from the Yugoslav region of Kosovo said in Dover on Monday that he had paid 7,000 German marks--about $3,500--to be smuggled into the city, and officials estimate that Chinese immigrants pay about $24,000 for a smuggling package that includes transportation, false documents and, sometimes, a low-wage job to pay off the debt. In an effort to combat such smuggling, the **British government earlier this year imposed a $3,000 per head fine on truck drivers ferrying illegal immigrants, and British and French officials agreed to patrol each other's railway stations to crack down on immigrants entering Britain on the Eurostar train, which links France and Britain via the Channel Tunnel.** Refugee advocates say tighter restrictions are forcing immigrants to take more dangerous routes into the country. **Rather than tightening borders, they say, the answer is to process asylum applications more quickly.**

"It is virtually impossible for people feeling persecution to enter Britain legally," said Nick Hardwick, chief executive of the Refugee Council. "They are therefore forced to search for such desperate measures in their search for sanctuary." Conservative Party leaders, who have made the asylum issue a campaign theme for next year's parliamentary election, say the Labor government is a "soft touch" for immigrants.

In Dover, which had virtually no ethnic minorities before the mid-1990s, most asylum-seekers are presumed to be poor people looking for jobs, and many residents resent the state aid they receive. "Eighty percent of them are bogus," said taxi driver Brian Martin, 50, who often picks up immigrants at the docks and drives them to their government-sponsored hostels. "I think of the poor old pensioners [British retirees] who just got a 75 pence a week raise, and these people are getting hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It's all right for Tony Blair to talk about a multiracial society, but he doesn't have to live next door to them," Martin said. Mick Mahoney, a retired teacher, acknowledged that many of the immigrants "come from the most appalling backgrounds. We made friends with some people from Bosnia last year who had lost 12 family members. We do our best for the people who deserve it. But others, especially the single men, see us as a good economic target." The former Yugoslav federation is responsible for the most asylum-seekers in Britain, with China in second place. Would-be immigrants also come from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Romania, Sri Lanka and Congo. (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC) Ill-Fated Attempts Some incidents in which smuggled immigrants died: June 19, 2000: The bodies of 58 immigrants, apparently from the Far East, are found in a truck in the English port of Dover. April 27, 2000: U.S. and Bahamian forces rescue 288 Haitian migrants whose boat ran aground in the southern Bahamas, causing as many as 17 deaths, survivors said. Dec. 4, 1999: A van packed with 17 Mexican migrant workers hits a tractor-trailer rig on U.S. I-40, killing 13 migrants. Nov. 25, 1999: A boat carrying Cuban immigrants sinks on its way to the United States, killing 11 people, including the mother of then 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez.

Nov. 1, 1999: A Greek ferry catches fire, causing 14 stowaways from countries including Iraq to die of asphyxiation. All crew members and passen-gers evacuate safely. Oct. 1, 1999: The decomposing bodies of six Romanian stowaways are found in a load of sunflower seeds aboard a cargo ship in Spain. Authorities suspect that the stowaways suffocated. April 1-2, 1999: At least 12 Mexicans attempting to cross the border into California are caught in a freak snowstorm and die. March 6, 1999: Two boats overloaded with illegal Haitian immigrants capsize off Palm Beach, Fla., killing as many as 40. Dec. 18, 1998: A speedboat carrying two Cuban-American immigrant smugglers and 21 Cuban passengers capsizes near the Florida Keys, killing 14. Aug. 13, 1998: The bodies of seven Mexican immigrants are found in California's Imperial Valley. Authorities believe that the migrants died of heat exhaustion. June 6, 1993: The Golden Venture, a ship smuggling nearly 300 Chinese immigrants, runs aground in New York. Ten die trying to swim ashore.

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2000/0703/snaking.html Time Magazine article on the indicent

**TIME EUROPE [| July 03, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 25]** **Snaking Toward Death** **Desperate illegal migrants are risking their lives to enter Europe. Many are perishing in the attempt** By J.F.O. MCALLISTER Dover

Belching diesel smoke, gunning their engines as they prepare to merge onto the highway that runs beneath Dover's white cliffs, more than a thousand trucks a day lumber down Dock East Road, a ceaseless testament to the commerce flowing through the vast ferry terminal that links Britain to mainland Europe. Thirty meters away stands a nondescript warehouse where last week one truck was parked that never made it out. Customs inspectors had decided to open its doors when they saw it didn't belong to any company they knew and that its driver had paid cash for the ferry crossing from Zeebrugge in Belgium. They thought they might find smuggled cigarettes or alcohol. Instead, behind some pallets of tomatoes, they found dead bodies: 54 men and four women who had been on the final leg of a four-month journey from China. In total darkness and sweltering heat, after trying to open a small air vent that had been closed from the outside, pounding on the walls with their shoes and making cries for help that no one heard, all but two of the 60 would-be immigrants suffocated as they used up all the oxygen in the sealed container that became their tomb.

The corpses that Dover ambulance drivers had to pry apart are only the latest tragic product of a booming global business: smuggling people from poorer countries to richer ones. The U.N.'s International Organization for Migration (iom) estimates that gangs earn $5-$7 billion in profits each year from human trafficking; some researchers think the figure reaches $12 billion. The supply of customers includes bona fide political refugees but is as boundless as the simple desire for a better life.

The human traffickers charge $20,000 to $60,000 to get illegal immigrants from China, South and Southeast Asia, Iran and other points to the United States, Japan, Western Europe or sometimes South America. Upon arrival, typically they are put to work in sweatshops—the women often in brothels—until their debt is repaid. Those who miss payments are beaten, or worse. Their families back home can also be targeted. Sometimes the gangs insist that families borrow to pay the fees right away, sending home a sliced-off ear or finger of a loved one to make their point.

Countries are cooperating to choke off the smuggling routes, but it's a struggle. The penalties for getting caught are often milder than for shipping drugs. Traffickers find new channels to experiment with as legitimate global commerce accelerates. "We make moves and the smugglers find new ways to get around them," says Brian Vaillancourt, a U.S. immigration official in Bangkok. "It's a new, globalized Mafia."

Its biggest players are Chinese gangs called snakeheads. Sometimes the gangs put their human cargo on regular flights with forged documents, or in the holds of ships; illegal Asian migrants to the U.S. are even walking across the U.S.-Mexico border, led by locals called coyotes, after long truck rides from landing points in South or Central America.


 * The dead in Dover came overland. That's the primary route for the growing number of Chinese illegals coming to Europe, drawn to Chinese communities in France (200,000) and Britain (250,000). Police won't confirm the exact journey as described by the two survivors, who were rushed to hospital and then released to a police safe house, but relatives of the victims, who had been staying in periodic touch by phone until the calls stopped coming last week, say it began in Fujian province and included Russia, the Czech Republic, Germany and the Netherlands.**

By coincidence, a group of 60 Chinese was detained by Belgian authorities in April, but quickly released because the regional detention center was full. They were put on a train, unescorted, to Antwerp, nearer to the English Channel. Fingerprints now prove they weren't among the dead in Dover. Belgian officials had instructed the Chinese only to stay out of the E.U.'s so-called Schengen states, which share a no-passport zone. Britain isn't a Schengen member and last week its officials were furious at Belgium's willingness to pass the buck.

The final journey of the doomed Chinese began when they boarded a truck working for van der Spek Transporten. The company was registered only the previous week. Its owner is Arjen van der Spek, a 24-year-old whose nickname Spekkie refers to the Dutch word for bacon and also to a popular marshmallow candy. The moniker is apt: neighbors in his smart Rotterdam suburb describe the heavily built farmhand as easily led, ineffectual and gullible. The bartender at his local pub, where patrons once racked up a $1,700 bill on his tab before he wised up, says van der Spek "gets lured by easy money, but he is not smart enough to know what he is letting himself in for."

Before starting his company he had shown no interest in trucking. He has no commercial driving license and his mother doesn't know whether he even has a regular one. His lawyer confirmed that van der Spek had been convicted in Spain for shipping marijuana, but said he knew nothing about the Chinese on his truck and "is horrified by what happened."

British police charged the driver of the truck, Perry Wacker, with 58 counts of manslaughter and related crimes. Neighbors describe the 32-year-old Rotterdam resident as "a weird guy" and a "wheeler-dealer." A trucking company Wacker set up went bankrupt in 1998. His uncle Ronald said, "Perry can't have known there were people in his truck." A 38-year-old Chinese chef, You Yi, and an interpreter, Guo Ying, 29, were charged in Britain with conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants.

Hundreds of detectives and intelligence agents from Britain, Holland and other countries are now working to follow the snakeheads' network back to its bosses. China said it was "shocked" by the Dover tragedy and declared that it too had been cracking down on the traffickers, arresting 800 last year. But even honest officials will be daunted by the task of damming the human tide. The streets of Cangxi, in Fujian, where many of the Dover victims are thought to have lived, are sprouting fancy houses built with hard currency sent home by previous migrants. China's state media don't like to admit the scale of the emigration so its dangers are not publicized. "If you're only getting paid $20 a month and you're watching American soap operas," says Arthur Bowring, director of the Hong Kong Shipowners' Association, "the temptation is there." And until all countries become equally developed, or legal immigration becomes much easier, it always will be.

—With reporting by Jaime FlorCruz/Beijing, Robert Horn/Bangkok, Wendy Kan/Hong Kong, Theodora mac Ruair’/Rotterdam and Jane Walker/Madrid