Trafficking victim says thanks to campaigners
BY ANNIE BROWN a.brown@dailyrecord.co.uk
A VICTIM of modern slavery saved from deportation by campaigners has been given a five-year reprieve to stay and work in Scotland as a refugee.
Trafficking victim Duc Nguyen was due to be put on a plane two years ago and sent back to Vietnam but the Home Office cancelled at the 11th hour following protests.
Yesterday Duc, 46, thanked the people of his adopted home for helping him to stay long enough to obtain refugee status, which means he can remain for five years, with the hope of permanent residency.
Yesterday he said he was overjoyed and relieved that he is no longer living in fear of deportation.
He added: “It is a huge relief. I am ready to get a job and just be a normal Scottish person.
“I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who has put so much effort into supporting me, including those I’ve never met. I would like to say thank you to Scotland.”
Duc, was trafficked to England, where he was held captive as a human slave, working 15 hours a day for no pay in a cannabis farm.
When he realised it was illegal, he was too scared to try to escape because the windows had electric locks which shocked him when he tried to open them.
He said: “There was nothing I could do – they were gangsters and part of an underground group.
“I had to wake up after midnight to turn on and off the lights and to water the cannabis.
“I often had to stay up overnight. I was trapped in a farm in a room with hardly any oxygen.” After eight months, the farm was raided and Duc was jailed in Wandsworth Prison in London.
The Home Office accepted that Duc was a victim of trafficking in August 2017 but only after he had already served six months in prison.
He was released on bail in January 2018 and relocated to Glasgow, where he threw himself into volunteering to pay back the community he grew to love, working for projects supporting those locked in poverty,
But after the Home Office refused his appeal for asylum, he was taken to Dungavel House Immigration Removal Centre in Lanarkshire and then moved to Colnbrook Immigration Removal Centre, in Middlesex, to await deportation. At the time, Duc told the Record, he was “terrified” he would be killed if he returned to Vietnam where he owed money to the gangsters who trafficked him.
Gangsters threaten trafficking victims and their families with violence and death if they escape their clutches.
Councillor Kim Long, who represents Dennistoun in