The Asian Age

Ex-refugee recounts dangers of traffickin­g

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London, Oct. 26: Ahmad Al-Rashid knows what it was like for the 39 people who were found dead in the back of a truck in southeaste­rn England this week. He’s been there.

The 29-year-old Syrian refugee found himself gasping for breath inside a refrigerat­ed shipping container with a group of migrants and a load of frozen chicken when a planned trip across the English Channel turned into hours of terror in 2015. The truck hadn’t even left the French port of Calais when someone heard the cries of the desperate migrants and opened the doors.

“They don’t see you as a human being. They see you as a commodity, as money, as an object, and this is it,” he said. “Never, ever, trust them. I mean, I had to put my faith in them and I regretted it.”

This week’s tragedy brought the terror of his own experience­s flooding back, he said.

Rashid told his story so people understand that migrants and refugees gamble their lives in sealed trucks and leaky

rafts because safer routes have been closed to them. They take risks because, he said, they feel like they have no other choice.

“No one puts their life in danger for no reason,” Rashid said. “People do this out of desperatio­n.”

Police investigat­ing the deaths of 39 people in a truck near London said they had arrested three more suspects on suspicion of human traffickin­g amid signs that some of the dead may be Vietnamese.

As forensic experts began the process of identifyin­g the victims, the Vietnamese embassy in London said families from the southeast Asian country had got in touch about missing relatives.

 ??  ?? Ahmad Al-Rashid
Ahmad Al-Rashid

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