MAUREEN JOHNSON
Associated Press
Wednesday, June 21, 2000

London -- Police arrested a second suspect yesterday in the deaths of 58 Chinese illegal immigrants, and a Chinese refugee came forward to say his cousin, who called repeatedly during a four-month odyssey from China to Western Europe, was almost certainly among the dead.

The immigrants were found dead late Sunday at the English port of Dover, apparently suffocated in the back of an unventilated truck on the disastrous final leg of their trip.

The Dutch driver of the truck was detained in Dover and held on suspicion of manslaughter, and yesterday, Dutch authorities announced the second arrest. They said they captured the suspect during a raid on three houses in the Dutch port of Rotterdam.

Police did not release the suspect's name and refused to say if the suspect was a man they had been pursuing, Dutch engineer Arie Van der Spek, 24, who owned the company that leased the truck. Police said earlier that Mr. Van der Spek registered the company, Van der Spek Transporten, on June 15. He vanished before police showed up at his Rotterdam apartment on Monday.

In Dover, Dutch and British police interrogated the truck driver who brought the young immigrants, most of them in their 20s, on the last leg of their trip from southern China's Fujian province. And in Canterbury, the only two survivors remained under police guard yesterday, traumatized by their futile struggle to escape the truck.

Quoting unidentified hospital sources, reports in London newspapers said the two men told an interpreter how they banged on the truck's walls and shouted, their desperation mounting as their companions began to pass out and die.

The survivors are key to tracing the smugglers who organized the hellish journey across the English Channel from Belgium, with the immigrants packed in among tomatoes. The truck's refrigeration unit was turned off as temperatures outside reached 30 degrees, the hottest day of the year so far.

Police hope the two men will soon be fit enough for formal questioning.

"To have 60 young people in the back of a truck, there would have to have been some organization to get these people over from China," Kent county police Detective Superintendent Dennis McGookin said. "In liaising with the Chinese police, hopefully, we will know more on this soon."

Meanwhile, a Chinese immigrant said he was sure his cousin, Chen Lin, 19, was among the dead.

Yang Chen, who slipped into Britain in January and has applied for political asylum, said Chen Lin's parents had borrowed $35,000 for the trip. Chen Lin left the city of Changle in Fujian province in February, Mr. Yang told a British news agency.

Chen Lin phoned home regularly during the tortuous journey through China and Russia, and on foot through the mountains of the Czech Republic and then to the Netherlands, Mr. Yang said. He said his cousin was accompanied along the way by armed smugglers.

"The last call was from Holland on Sunday and they said they were travelling to the United Kingdom that night. . . . They have not heard from him since," said Mr. Yang, 20.

An estimated 150,000 Chinese are in Britain, many working for low wages in restaurants in London's Chinatown district. A Chinese attorney in London, Wahplow Tan, said relatives of other victims feared deportation if they came forward.

The disaster has focused international attention on the syndicates that traffic in people, and on the desperate risks that illegal immigrants take to flee oppression or poverty.

The Chinese province of Fujian is notorious for immigrant-smuggling gangs known as snakeheads. Four decrepit boats were intercepted off the British Columbia coast last year carrying about 600 migrants from Fujian.

"There is a huge willingness now to try and tackle this problem of trade in human misery and human beings," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday.

Still, the migrants keep coming. Britain's Home Office said 128 people had been caught at Dover alone since Sunday, including Iraqis, Afghans, Iranians and Poles.

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