MARK PALMER
Special to The Globe and Mail; With reports from Canadian Press and Associated Press
Tuesday, June 20, 2000

London -- Britain has launched a major inquiry into the "profoundly evil" organizers responsible for the deaths of 58 illegal Asian migrants found in a truck at an English port yesterday morning.

The discovery of the 54 men and four women, thought to be Chinese, sparked a flurry of outrage in Britain and across Europe reminiscent of the reaction in Canada after rusty boats carrying Chinese migrants began arriving off the coast of British Columbia last summer.

The dead were found yesterday lying among a half-load of tomatoes in a sealed, unrefrigerated truck that arrived in Dover by ferry from Zeebrugge, Belgium.

They had been locked in from the outside of the Dutch-registered truck, which was parked on the quay at Zeebrugge all day Sunday, the hottest day of the year. Only the two men nearest the back doors survived.

"I will never forget the sight that greeted us when we opened the back doors for as long as I live," said one of the customs officers called in to search the airtight 18-metre-long container. "There was just piles and piles of bodies. It was absolutely sickening. We were almost overcome by the smell."

British officials said the country's National Crime Squad will lead the effort to catch the traffickers, working with intelligence and immigration officials as well as other European countries.
European Union leaders, meeting in Portugal, said they will accelerate measures to curb illegal migration and the trade in human beings. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees also expressed its concern.

British Home Secretary Jack Straw told the House of Commons yesterday that he is "appalled by this loss of human life. Our thoughts are with the relatives of those who have perished." Calling the smuggling trade "profoundly evil," he also said that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has been "determined to crack down on this trade."

Less than a month ago, Mr. Straw announced a sharp drop in the number of applicants for asylum in Britain, and a modest reduction in the huge backlog of applications. Officials said they were making progress against the growing numbers of illegal migrants with a tougher policy that has imposed penalties on people caught bringing immigrants into the country.

Dover is a common entry point to Britain for refugee claimants, many of whom hop aboard the 4,000 trucks that cross the English Channel on ferries every day. Police and customs officers find as many as 2,000 illegal migrants hidden in trucks at or near British ports each month, and believe many more slip through.

But the arrival of Asians at Dover was unusual (most migrants come from the Balkans), and may signify a shift in smugglers' efforts to ship their human cargo to Canada, the United States and Australia.

The truck on which the migrants were found was apparently noted in Zeebrugge because its documents were unorthodox and because the driver paid in cash. The truck company, Van Der Spek, had never previously travelled with P & O Stena, the ferry company. But no inspection was made.

It was only after the Belgian authorities were unable to trace the telephone number and address given to them by the driver that British authorities were notified.

Last night, British police did not rule out the possibility that the driver, now in custody, might be charged with murder.

"We have much to do to explain this," said Mark Pugash, a Kent police spokesman. "It was a dreadful crime scene. This kind of thing doesn't happen spontaneously on this scale. You need levels of organization and finance to do this."

Fears were expressed about the safety of the two survivors, who were under police protection in hospital last night.

"If you were behind the organization of this, wouldn't you want to get to the survivors?" Mr. Pugash said.

The stowaways are thought to have begun their journey in China. In the last five years, the number of asylum seekers from that country has increased dramatically. Wah-Piow Tan, a London lawyer, has 2,000 Chinese asylum seekers on his books. He said yesterday's disaster had been "waiting to happen."

Last year, Britain saw a surge in asylum applications to more than 75,000, about 49,000 more than in the previous year. The war in Kosovo, which resulted in thousands of ethnic Albanians seeking refuge in the West, partly explains the jump in numbers, but there was also a large influx from eastern Europe, Central Asia and China.

Chinese refugees arriving in Britain, as in Canada, come mainly from the Changle and Fuqing areas in the coastal province of Fujian, brought mostly by agents known as snakeheads.

But none of those found yesterday morning carried documents, making the job of identifying them more difficult.

After the bodies were discovered shortly past midnight, emergency workers moved them to a temporary mortuary in Dover, beneath the towering white cliffs that serve as the first sight of Britain for thousands of migrants smuggled through the port.

The arduous work of performing postmortems was done during the afternoon and evening by two pathologists. Although police would not speculate on the causes of death, other officials said the passengers probably suffocated.

Britain's opposition Conservative Party, whose leader, William Hague, has called for far stiffer laws on immigration, and has chided the government for refusing to jail asylum seekers while their cases are being considered, said yesterday it did not wish to make political capital from the deaths.

But campaigners on behalf of asylum seekers accused the government of contributing to the increase in the smuggling trade. "There is now no legal way for these people to come into the country," said Nick Hardwick, director of the Refugee Council, "and so a market is created for the criminals."

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