Police investigate Irish gang links to 39 Chinese migrants killed in lorry
Beijing works with British authorities to find out how 39 of its citizens froze to death in the back of a lorry
DETECTIVES were last night focusing on three suspected Irish gang members who may have been involved in the trafficking and subsequent deaths of 39 Chinese migrants in Britain.
The bodies of eight women and 31 men were last night being transferred to a mortuary as police began the
“lengthy and complex” process of identifying them. Officers were granted more time to question the driver of the lorry, named locally as 25-year-old Mo Robinson from Portadown in Co Armagh. He travelled from Dublin to Holyhead in Wales on Oct 20 before picking up the refrigerated container at Purfleet in Essex early on Wednesday.
It is believed Mr Robinson, who was only in control of the container for 35 minutes, may have found his gruesome cargo and called emergency services himself. Security sources told The Daily Telegraph they were concentrating on a South Armagh based criminal gang with links to dissident paramilitaries.
The three, who are based close to the border, are suspected of helping orchestrate the smuggling operation that ended in tragedy on Wednesday. One has been linked to the firm in Varna, Bulgaria, that owned the lorry cab that transported the container from Purfleet
to an industrial estate in Essex.
The Black Sea resort is known to have links with Irish republican gangs that allegedly use it as a smuggling base for cash and cigarettes. The suspects are believed to be linked to smuggling operations both sides of the Irish border.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland declined to comment.
The emergence of the victims’ nationality raised questions over whether they followed a similar route to that taken by 58 Chinese migrants found dead in a lorry at Dover in 2000. They paid £20,000 each to a notorious gang known as the “Snakeheads”.
It also emerged that Belgian customs only check one in 400 ship container papers at the port. There have been repeated warnings that people smugglers have been targeting Zeebrugge and smaller British ports such as Purfleet.
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CHINA said last night it was working with British authorities to establish the identities of the 39 people found frozen to death in the back of a lorry.
Police yesterday confirmed that eight women and 31 men were found dead in the vehicle on an industrial estate in Grays after being shipped from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.
The news that they were all Chinese nationals prompted fears that ruthless
“Snakehead” gangs that charge thousands of pounds to smuggle people into Britain and force them into black-market labour when they arrive, were responsible for the tragedy.
Pippa Mills, the deputy chief constable of Essex Police, said last night: “This is an incredibly sensitive and high-profile investigation and we are working swiftly to gather as full a picture as possible as to how these people lost their lives. Recovery of the bodies is ongoing and the post-mortem and identification processes, which will be lengthy and complex, can then begin.”
The Chinese embassy said it was in close contact with British police. Officials were expected to visit Tilbury, in Essex, where the bodies were last night being transferred to a mortuary.
Liu Xiaoming the Chinese Ambassador to the UK last night said the Chinese Embassy has sent a team led by the minister-counsellor in charge of consular affairs to Essex. “They have met with the local police, who said that they are verifying the identity of the 39 deceased, whose nationality still cannot be confirmed,” he said.
Police and port authorities have reportedly failed to act on repeated warnings about smuggling from local people who said they found stacks of discarded passports and witnessesed migrants loaded from lorries in the area, according to The Times.
The case has echoes of a similar tragedy in 2000, when the bodies of 58 migrants were found in a container that had gone from the same Belgian port, this time to Dover (see map above).
‘They would be harboured in secure housing controlled by smugglers. There were instances of migrants being kidnapped by other Snakeheads for ransoms’
During the trial of Perry Wacker, the Dutch lorry driver who was jailed for 14 years for their manslaughter, it was heard that the group had begun the journey in Beijing, China’s capital.
The group of 60, of which only two survived, paid £20,000 each. They flew to the Serbian capital Belgrade on their real passports. They were then issued with fake ones and driven in cars to Hungary before being transported through Austria and France in the back of the lorry, before boarding a train to Rotterdam, Holland. From here they were put in another lorry, which was driven to Zeebrugge, and on to a ferry to Dover. En route the lorry’s air vent was closed and they suffocated.
Last year Spain arrested 155 mostly Chinese nationals and busted a gang that trafficked Chinese migrants into Britain and Ireland for £18,000 each.
In the latest case it was unclear where the 39 people climbed into the container, though it is thought they were already inside when it entered the Zeebrugge port.
Steve Harvey, a former senior Europol officer who now works as an immigration consultant, investigated
‘They arrive as irregular migrants and are highly susceptible to internal trafficking in the sex industry and the black labour market’
“Snakehead” operations after the Dover incident in 2000.
He said most irregular Chinese migrants came from the Fujian province in south-east China.
He said: “They were usually flown direct to Russia, almost like a staging area, then they would travel to the Balkans, either by air or by road. They would be in south-east Europe for some time waiting for the next leg of the journey.
“They would be harboured in secure housing controlled by smugglers. There were instances of migrants being kidnapped by other ‘Snakeheads’ and ransomed.”
He said such gangs, which had been operating for hundreds of years, were still using similar trafficking techniques.
Once they reach the UK their ordeal is often not at an end and they may be further trafficked, like the cockle pickers who lost their lives in Morecambe Bay in February 2004.
Mr Harvey said: “They arrive as irregular migrants and are highly susceptible to internal trafficking in the sex industry and the black labour market.”
Aaron Halegua, a research fellow at New York University who has worked on human trafficking cases involving Chinese migrants, said sometimes those making the journey were “not told that much information, and not told much about the final destination, or the process to get there.”
For now, “Snakeheads” peddle their wares openly in China – online searches quickly turn up websites and social media accounts advertising such services, some starting at £6,500, offering passage to Australia.
“Like any sort of business or scheme, you have advertisements, and all this stuff they’re throwing at people,” said Mr Halegua. “You’re susceptible if you’re in an economic rut.”
With jobs in China increasingly hard to find, particularly in rural areas as the broader economy slows, it is possible more will fall victim.
Mr Harvey said if the people had made the journey safely to the UK there were normally two options; they would either be met by an agent or be given a phone number. Once on British soil it would be likely that they would “disappear into the black labour market, working in restaurants or Chineserun businesses,” he said.
In 2000 the Chinese gang had passed over control over the migrants to a Dutch gang to bring the migrants on the final leg of the journey.
The “Snakehead” gangs were notoriously difficult to get intelligence on because there were few informants, with most far too frightened to give evidence against them.
Mr Harvey said that the migration usually followed a family decision to send someone to Europe in the hope that they would have a better life and earn sufficient money to send home and improve the life for all of them.
The shocking discovery of the bodies of 39 migrants in a lorry in Essex raises profoundly troubling questions. Faced with such a tragedy, we have a duty to stop and take stock of the situation on our borders and of the broader issue of illegal migration. Why did these individuals expose themselves to such danger? And what could be done to prevent these situations in the future?
The truth is that, over the past 10 years, austerity has diminished the resources available to UK Border Force. This has been a particular problem as political and public pressures have encouraged the authorities to devote extra attention to Calais and Dover, while other routes into the country have been neglected.
In the past, Border Force had mobile teams that travelled to smaller ports and airports. Intelligence operatives were on friendly terms with harbour masters and airport managers, building a network of informed sources capable of assisting the authorities by reporting suspicious behaviour. I believe that the funding currently allocated does not allow for this approach to be taken, especially as Dover has sucked in resources.
Yet those small ports and airports present a greater risk now than ever. The increased security and technology at Calais has forced the organised crime gangs responsible for people trafficking to diversify their approach, using small vessels and alternative ports. Invariably, this increases the risks for the migrants and the rewards for the criminals, as they then charge more.
A focus must be placed on other ports, with intelligence resources deployed to identify the risks and the new routes that trafficking gangs are now using. Analysis of manifestos, routes taken, observation and other sources can identify the criminal exploitation of ports. Felixstowe, Purfleet (where the Essex container is believed to have entered the country) and others have a considerable flow of traffic. Randomly stopping and searching containers can only play a minor part.
We should not underestimate the groups behind this. Typically, organised crime is the catalyst for illegal migration. The gangs have wide tentacles, including agents in source countries as far afield as the Indian subcontinent, sub-saharan Africa, Afghanistan and China. These people prey on the vulnerable, painting a false picture of the UK as a land of milk and honey, with opportunities for employment and a way out of poverty.
Families pool resources, often selling all their goods to fund a (usually) male family member to travel to the UK in the hope that others can follow later. The organised crime gangs are paid up to £10,000 for the journey, helping migrants travel to northern France and then arranging the final trip across the Channel.
Every stage of this is enormously hazardous and the reality for migrants who do reach the UK is a long way from the promises of the traffickers. They often end up sleeping on the streets, living in “beds in sheds” or forced into modern slavery, doing unpaid work on behalf of gang masters. The criminals responsible for this evil trade have little consideration for the plight of their customers. Tragedies, such as the deaths discovered in Essex or those that have occurred as a result of small dinghies sinking in the English Channel over the past year, are seen by them as an acceptable risk.
By operating across borders, the gangs can evade the attention of local law enforcement. Tackling them requires better international cooperation, and for law enforcement agencies to work together. It would also help if the French and Belgian governments worked harder to return illegal migrants to their country of origin rather than allowing them to move from one illegal camp to another.
The needless deaths caused by illegal migration cannot always be prevented, no matter the lengths to which immigration and law enforcement agencies go. The volume and complexity of the ports makes intervention hugely difficult. Sadly, while trafficking remains a lucrative, relatively low-risk industry, it will continue. Nevertheless there is plenty more that we can – and must – do to stop it.