Saturday, August 28,
1999 U.S. Coast Guard halts another
suspected smuggling ship 75 chinese on
vessel: Officials experience language barrier with
passengers
Stewart Bell National
Post
The United States Coast Guard has intercepted what appears to be
another shipload of Chinese boat people. The 75 suspected illegal
migrants were found aboard a broken-down cargo vessel adrift in the
mid-Pacific.
The ship was being towed yesterday to Midway Island.
While authorities have so far been unable to communicate with the
passengers due to the language barrier, U.S. officials are assuming
the ship is yet another smuggling boat ferrying Chinese migrants to
Canada or the United States.
"I would assume that, but I don't have any confirmation," said
Nicole Chulick, spokeswoman for the Immigration and Naturalization
Service. "As soon as we can interview them then we'll have a better
idea."
U.S. immigration officials were planning to take custody of the
passengers once they arrived at Midway, at the western rim of the
Hawaiian Islands chain, where they will be housed and interviewed.
It was unclear whether the ship was destined for Canada or the
U.S., but both coastlines are about the same distance from the
archipelago where the 50-metre ship was first spotted this week.
The ship came to the attention of the coast guard on Wednesday
when rescuers picked up a radio distress call. A search plane found
it 560 kilometres off Midway. The ship had been adrift for a month
and was low on food and water. Several passengers needed medical
attention.
"Our primary concern is for the safety of those on board so we
took the vessel in tow to Midway because that's the closest port to
where they were," said Eric Hedaa, public information officer with
the 14th Coast Guard District in Honolulu.
Four shiploads of migrants from China's Fujian province have
landed in Canada and the U.S. so far this summer. The first arrived
on the B.C. coast July 20, followed by a second vessel on Aug. 11.
The following day, 132 Chinese migrants were found in the hold of
a ship docked in Savannah, Ga. They were in a secret compartment
that had been covered with a sheet of steel and a door that was
welded in place.
Another ship carrying 100 undocumented Chinese migrants was later
intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard near the Mariana Islands, a U.S.
protectorate south of Japan. The passengers said their destination
was Vancouver.
Immigration officials suspect Chinese migrants have been using
Canada as a gateway to the U.S., where they are put to work as
sweatshop labourers or prostitutes to pay off their debts to the
smugglers, organized crime figures known as snakeheads.
The British Columbia government, which has custody of the 75
under-age migrants who arrived on the West Coast this summer aboard
the two ships, has advised the youths to return to China.
The boat arrivals have ignited a debate over Canada's immigration
policies, but federal officials say those coming by sea are only a
small fraction of the thousands of migrants who arrive here each
year and claim to be refugees.
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