Fifty-eight illegal immigrants found dead at British port

Fifty-eight illegal immigrants found dead at British port
ANJALI MODY

LONDON, JUNE 19: Bodies of fifty eight people, believed to be of Chinese origin, were found in a lorry at the docks in Dover, a British port. The 54 men and four women whose age have not yet been identified had, it would appear, either stowed away or been loaded on the lorry carrying tomatoes to Britain from Zeebruge in Belgium.

This is a commonly used method to enter Britain illegally and one employed by ruthless criminals who control trafficking of illegal immigrants into Europe.

While there have been cases of illegal immigrants dying in such circumstances before the enormous scale of this tragedy is without precedent. A customs official said that it was "quite a routine matter for officers to uncover illegal immigrants during searches". But, added that, "The numbers speak for themselves. The scale is something that officials here have not found previously and it has had a huge and very distressing impact on anyone who has been involved in it."

A lone British Customs and Excise official made the grim discovery during a routine search of the lorry just before midnight on Sunday night. Two men were found alive, who are now in hospital and expected to survive. It is not yet clear how the 54 victims died, although suffocation or carbon monoxide poisoning are likely causes.

Mark Pugash of Kent Police said that the lorry was an airtight 18-metre-long container, only partially loaded with fresh tomatoes. Its refrigerating unit was not switched on and it remains unclear what the interior temperature would have been.

British Home Secretary, Jack Straw, said: "This is a most terrible event. I am appalled by this loss of human life. Our thoughts are with the relatives of those who have perished. This particular incident is now subject to a major police investigation. The government is determined to continue to crack down on the evil trade in such trafficking, whose perpetrators have no regard for human life."

Earlier this year the British government announced fines of 2000 for lorry drivers caught transporting illegal immigrants. The threat of the penalty has apparently reduced the incidence of lorries transporting illegal immigrants. However it has not stopped the trade altogether because, as Jack Straw admitted, "the profit these criminals can make by smuggling humans in, rather than, say, drugs, is now very, very substantial".

Pugash said that the criminal investigation into the tragedy would try to trace journey that the victims took and where they boarded the truck. Police have not yet questioned the two survivors still recovering in hospital. They will be important witnesses in the telling of this awful tale.

In Britain the 58 deaths will hopefully force a change in the political rhetoric which these last many months has been dominated by the Conservative driven perspective that asylum seekers, refugees and illegal immigrants are people exploiting Britain's generous social security system and threatening the livelihoods of real Britons.

The enormity of this tragedy could, in a more open environment, generate a constructive debate on what forces people to leave their homelands for an uncertain future. Gwyn Prosser, Labour MP for Dover, said that the tragedy "does emphasise the awful despair that these people face and the chances they take in order to come across the channel." He said: The awful discovery at Dover should focus attention on stopping the traffic in illegal immigrants and targeting those responsible for it: "The focus of attention of should be on the people involved in trafficking in human cargo. We should really look at the criminals and racketeers who are making vast profits from this trade."

Nick Hardwick of the Refugee Council reacting to the news said: "This is a terrible tragedy... They are ordinary people in extraordinary situations and the fact that they are willing to take these risks suggest there must be something powerful motivating them to leave their own country." Hardwick added that the problem would not go away. He said: "Unless there's a much better system for managing migration overall then people will go on putting themselves in these very dangerous situations."