58 Migrants Died 'a Most Terrible Death' in England

By MARJORIE MILLER

June 20, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

DOVER, England — When British customs agents waved a 50-foot, Dutch-registered freight truck into the inspection dock of this port city, they thought they might find contraband alcohol or drugs, not 58 corpses slumped behind crates of tomatoes in what officials said Monday was the country’s worst smuggling disaster.

In the wake of the gruesome discovery late Sunday, Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to combat the “evil trade” in human beings, and French President Jacques Chirac echoed British calls for a common European immigration policy to prevent a repeat of the tragedy unfolding beneath the white cliffs of Dover.

The victims--54 men and four women--appeared to have been Chinese nationals smuggled by one of the so-called snakehead gangs that take illegal immigrants from China through Russia to Western Europe, according to a National Criminal Intelligence Service spokeswoman.

Two people survived what was probably the last leg of a clandestine journey, from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge across the English Channel via ferry to Dover; the others were believed to have suffocated in the airtight freight hold during the hottest weekend of the year in Britain. It was not known how long the immigrants were in the truck, but the channel crossing takes about five hours, and the truck’s refrigeration unit was turned off.

Oxygen-starved in the steamy heat, “the 58 who perished must have died a most terrible death,” Home Secretary Jack Straw told Parliament.

The survivors, both men, were recovering at an undisclosed hospital under police protection.

“Their security is of utmost concern. . . . They are very important to the inquiry,” said Kent police spokesman Mark Pugash. “This sort of operation doesn’t happen spontaneously. It requires planning and coordination.”

Police and customs officials said the truck rolled off the ferry from Zeebrugge about midnight Sunday. It was one of about 4,000 such trucks that make their way across the channel into Britain each day.

Customs officers had been tipped off that the driver had paid cash for the trip and that the company that reportedly owned the truck had registered with authorities only four days before, apparently with some false information.

“You select a vehicle for whatever reasons, and you never know what you’ll find once you get inside,” said customs spokesman Nigel Knott. “Sadly, on this occasion, they were confronted with this shocking scene.”

Police arrested the Dutch driver and set up a temporary mortuary in Dover where pathologists worked through the day to determine the causes of death and, perhaps, identify some of the bodies. Commonly in such cases, the would-be migrants travel without any personal documents.

The dehydrated survivors told translators that they had tried to escape from the truck but were unable to open the doors from the inside, BBC television reported Monday night.

Illegal immigration and the number of people seeking legal asylum throughout Western Europe have both risen sharply in recent years. Last year, roughly 71,000 people applied for asylum in Britain, claiming persecution in their homelands--up from 46,000 in 1998 and just 4,000 in 1988, according to Home Office statistics.

Throughout the European Union, an estimated 349,000 people filed applications for asylum in 1999, an increase of 19% over the previous year, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Germany received the largest number of asylum-seekers, followed by Britain.

Figures for illegal immigrants are not so readily available, since the trafficking is clandestine. British officials say they pulled 16,000 people out of trucks last year, perhaps only a fraction of those who made their way into the country.

Illustrating how common the problem is, Home Secretary Straw recently made a spot-check in Dover and witnessed nine bewildered men emerge from the back of a darkened truck.

The business of smuggling people to Europe is at least as profitable as the one that brings illegal migrants to the United States. One immigrant from the Yugoslav region of Kosovo said in Dover on Monday that he had paid 7,000 German marks--about $3,500--to be smuggled into the city, and officials estimate that Chinese immigrants pay about $24,000 for a smuggling package that includes transportation, false documents and, sometimes, a low-wage job to pay off the debt.

In an effort to combat such smuggling, the British government earlier this year imposed a $3,000 per head fine on truck drivers ferrying illegal immigrants, and British and French officials agreed to patrol each other’s railway stations to crack down on immigrants entering Britain on the Eurostar train, which links France and Britain via the Channel Tunnel.

Refugee advocates say tighter restrictions are forcing immigrants to take more dangerous routes into the country. Rather than tightening borders, they say, the answer is to process asylum applications more quickly.

“It is virtually impossible for people feeling persecution to enter Britain legally,” said Nick Hardwick, chief executive of the Refugee Council. “They are therefore forced to search for such desperate measures in their search for sanctuary.”

Conservative Party leaders, who have made the asylum issue a campaign theme for next year’s parliamentary election, say the Labor government is a “soft touch” for immigrants.

In Dover, which had virtually no ethnic minorities before the mid-1990s, most asylum-seekers are presumed to be poor people looking for jobs, and many residents resent the state aid they receive.

“Eighty percent of them are bogus,” said taxi driver Brian Martin, 50, who often picks up immigrants at the docks and drives them to their government-sponsored hostels.

“I think of the poor old pensioners [British retirees] who just got a 75 pence a week raise, and these people are getting hundreds and hundreds of pounds. It’s all right for Tony Blair to talk about a multiracial society, but he doesn’t have to live next door to them,” Martin said.

Mick Mahoney, a retired teacher, acknowledged that many of the immigrants “come from the most appalling backgrounds. We made friends with some people from Bosnia last year who had lost 12 family members. We do our best for the people who deserve it. But others, especially the single men, see us as a good economic target.”

The former Yugoslav federation is responsible for the most asylum-seekers in Britain, with China in second place. Would-be immigrants also come from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Romania, Sri Lanka and Congo.

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Ill-Fated Attempts

Some incidents in which smuggled immigrants died:

June 19, 2000: The bodies of 58 immigrants, apparently from the Far East, are found in a truck in the English port of Dover.

April 27, 2000: U.S. and Bahamian forces rescue 288 Haitian migrants whose boat ran aground in the southern Bahamas, causing as many as 17 deaths, survivors said.

Dec. 4, 1999: A van packed with 17 Mexican migrant workers hits a tractor-trailer rig on U.S. I-40, killing 13 migrants.

Nov. 25, 1999: A boat carrying Cuban immigrants sinks on its way to the United States, killing 11 people, including the mother of then 5-year-old Elian Gonzalez.

Nov. 1, 1999: A Greek ferry catches fire, causing 14 stowaways from countries including Iraq to die of asphyxiation. All crew members and passen-gers evacuate safely.

Oct. 1, 1999: The decomposing bodies of six Romanian stowaways are found in a load of sunflower seeds aboard a cargo ship in Spain. Authorities suspect that the stowaways suffocated.

April 1-2, 1999: At least 12 Mexicans attempting to cross the border into California are caught in a freak snowstorm and die.

March 6, 1999: Two boats overloaded with illegal Haitian immigrants capsize off Palm Beach, Fla., killing as many as 40.

Dec. 18, 1998: A speedboat carrying two Cuban-American immigrant smugglers and 21 Cuban passengers capsizes near the Florida Keys, killing 14.

Aug. 13, 1998: The bodies of seven Mexican immigrants are found in California’s Imperial Valley. Authorities believe that the migrants died of heat exhaustion.

June 6, 1993: The Golden Venture, a ship smuggling nearly 300 Chinese immigrants, runs aground in New York. Ten die trying to swim ashore.