Robina Qureshi responds to the news that 39 people have been found dead in a lorry in Essex
The Essex Lorry Tragedy highlights yet again Britain’s thriving people smuggling trade. It the fourth major red flag alert to the human smuggling trade since 2000.
On June 18, 2000, the bodies of 54 Chinese nationals (54 men and four women) were discovered in sealed, airless container at Dover port. Two young men survived the ordeal. Post-mortem examinations confirmed death was due to respiratory failure through asphyxiation. The driver of the Dutch-registered lorry had just made the crossing from Zeebrugge, Belgium, when his vehicle was pulled over for inspection by a customs official. According to reports, when the container doors were opened a scene “out of a nightmare” confronted the officer. Warm and putrid smelling air rushed out. Two men lay by the doors, gasping for breath. Behind them were 58 bodies lying sprawled between crates of tomatoes.
In August 2014, 35 people – including children – were found in a shipping container at Tilbury Docks. They were discovered after a freighter arrived from Zeebrugge, Belgium and was being unloaded. Supt Trevor Roe said staff at the docks were alerted to the container by “screaming and banging” from inside. Mr Roe said the police investigation would look into “the gangs or whoever may be involved in this conspiracy to bring these people in this way over to this country”. Mr Roe also said he did not know where the survivors had been going.
In 2004, 23 Chinese cockle pickers, under the control of criminal gang-masters, drowned when they were trapped by sweeping tides while working in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire. All were working illegally, picking cockles for hours on end to send money back to their families. RNLI crews who were called out recall being met by “a sea of bodies” It was their gangmaster, however, and a wider web of criminals, that truly profited while paying scant regard to the cockle pickers’ safety on the sands.
Mick Gradwell, the detective who led the investigation into that tragedy, said criminals were funnelling £1m per day to China by exploiting workers all around England.
“Tens of thousands of illegal Chinese workers were living in the country, building up hidden communities and a life below official recognition. The main reason 23 people died in Morecambe Bay on this particular night was because of poverty in the Fujian province of China. There is a constant threat and risk of people being abused like this and dying because they’re being forced to work in dangerous conditions,”
Mr Gradwell said while “significant sums” were pocketed by the gangmaster, the cockle pickers earned “a pittance”. Gangmaster Lin Liang Ren would drive the workers to Morecambe from Liverpool and visit casinos while the men and women toiled through the night.
In 2017, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said the “highest priority” organised immigration crime threat was clandestine activity using roll-on, roll-off lorries and containers. The NCA said organised crime groups “often use seaports away from the migrant camps”.
It highlighted that improved port controls at Calais and Coquelles in France meant the activity of such groups was displaced to other locations on the continent. Warnings were also made three years ago about smuggling gangs turning to less busy UK ports such as Purfleet. There have been rising numbers of migrants seeking to travel to the UK from northern Belgium, after French authorities tightened controls at Calais. In the same report last year, the NCA said:
“People-smugglers continue to favour hard-sided refrigerated lorries to transport migrants to the UK. Belgium has become a location of greater focus for the activities of organised people-smugglers in the past year where smugglers of various nationalities operate. The number of smugglers located there increased after the closure of the migrant camp at Dunkirk in March 2017.”
The root cause of these tragedies is not human smugglers; it is governments that have shut down safe and legal routes to sanctuary or a better life.
It is governments that give smugglers the opportunities to exploit tight border controls targeted at people from countries where human rights abuses are commonplace.
Tougher controls by governments simply push people to more dangerous routes, and to place their lives in the hands of smugglers.
This country has to think globally in relation to the refugee and migrant crisis. There are 65.6 million people who have been forcibly displaced because of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. We have to ask why people would be using such dangerous routes or became susceptible to trafficking in the first place. And we have to find a way for people to enter this country safely and legally.
The answer is not to tighten border controls further, but to reorganize our asylum and immigration system around people’s needs.
If people could enter the country more openly and with less fear, then there would not be any job for the people smugglers to do
Sadly, with the growing anti-immigrant rhetoric of our leaders and their fixation on borders and walls, we should expect more lorry loads of dead refugees or migrants at our borders.
Robina Qureshi is director of Positive Action in Housing
