Wednesday, June 21, 2000
One-way ticket to
oblivion
Desperate measures: some of the major routes
for trafficking in humans. Many come from villages in Fujian
province, right (click on graphic to reveal full version), where
money is sent back to build modern apartments. But the migrants take
a risk which can lead to death in foreign ports, such as
Dover.
GLENN SCHLOSS
It must have been an excruciatingly painful death - jammed inside a
hot, sealed container, 54 men and four women clawed at the metal
walls as the air inside that pitch-black coffin vanished. That was
the fate of the illegal immigrants, who are believed to be Chinese,
found dead on Monday in a truck container in Britain, with the
refrigeration turned off on one of the hottest days of the year.
The port where they were discovered by customs officers, Dover,
is a long way from Fujian province, from where experts say the
illegal immigrants are most likely to have come. The peasants and
unemployed along the coast of Fujian dream about migrating to the
West. "To find gold, sneak out. One goes, whole family wins gold,"
is a common saying. For a long time, they have viewed with awe the
United States, which is known in villages and towns as the "golden
mountain".
Five months ago, another sinister shipment of illegal immigrants
was found in the Seattle docks on the US west coast. Inside a
stinking, canvas-covered container, three mainland men had died
during a 16-day journey from Hong Kong aboard a cargo ship. They
became so seasick inside the box that they could not eat or drink
and died from malnutrition and dehydration.
Since the three men perished, there has been a crackdown by US
and Canadian customs and at Hong Kong docks, where the ship and at
least two others carrying illegal human loads are thought to have
begun their journeys. That has forced organisers of the human cargo
trade to turn to other destinations.
They now appear to be targeting Western Europe, according to
experts in the field. The latest case has turned international
attention to what analysts say has been an increasing growth in the
flow of illegal immigration, particularly from China. "Not only has
the US been experiencing increasing numbers of arrivals, Canada and
Mexico are getting more as the US enforcement effort has been
fortified," says Arthur Helton, a senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, an independent American think-tank.
A Western immigration official based in Asia agrees, but adds
that Latin America has emerged as a stopover point for illegal
immigrants seeking entry into North America over the past year, and
especially following authorities' targeting of shipping to the west
coast.
Snakeheads have a number of constantly changing routes,
stretching around the world, for getting their human cargoes to
their destinations, says former Canadian government senior
immigration officer Jean-Paul Delisle. As soon as law enforcement
action targets one route, they are adept at quickly switching to
another.
European intelligence sources estimated in the mid-1990s that as
many as 800,000 mainland Chinese were waiting in "staging posts" in
the former Soviet Union and its former states, such as Russia,
Bulgaria and Poland, for an opportunity to migrate to Western Europe
or North America. By comparison, US officials have estimated that
100,000 mainlanders illegally leave their homeland every year.
They wait for months, or even years in some cases, as the
organised gangs seek to pick the right time and target destination,
says Mr Delisle, who is a consultant to the Aviation Security
Company (Avseco) which runs security at Chek Lap Kok airport. The
route into Eastern Europe has been exploited for a long time because
of lax visa requirements and easily-corrupted officials in those
nations. Chinese can travel to Eastern Europe easily by air, flying
into any of a number of Southeast Asian nations and, from there, on
to Eastern Europe, he says.
Hong Kong's airport and container terminals have been a major
transit point, with triad involvement. More than 100 illegal
immigrants were found in cargo containers in Seattle and Vancouver
in January, aboard ships which had passed through the SAR. Migrants
holding forged documents frequently manage to elude detection at
Chek Lap Kok before escaping by air, but quite a number are caught
with forged documents, says Mr Delisle. Immigration Department
statistics show that 1,903 people were arrested at the airport
during the 1998-99 financial year for carrying fake visas or
passports.
Experts speculate that the group found dead in the back of the
truck in Dover had flown to Eastern Europe and travelled by road to
Belgium, where they were packed into the lorry. They might have had
genuine Chinese passports or forged documents, with visas to a
European nation, but no papers allowing them into Britain - which is
why the illegal immigrants might have resorted to their final
journey.
Contributing to the belief that snakeheads are targeting Britain,
the number of Chinese asylum seekers in Britain rose from 225 in
October to 500 in March and 455 in April. The Asia-based Western
immigration official, who would not be named, says those
successfully entering Britain either immediately claim asylum or go
underground into the nation's 150,000-strong Chinese community,
where they work in Chinatowns.
With debts of up to US$40,000 (about HK$312,000) to pay off for
their illegal voyages, the migrants are forced to work for a number
of years. The lucky ones get work in restaurants where the pay is
usually less than the legal wage, while the unlucky are forced into
brothels, the drug business or garment sweatshops. Only when they
have a brush with authorities will they lodge a claim for asylum,
says the official.
However, many are not genuine refugees. Some of the young men in
their early 20s found inside the containers at the Seattle docks in
December lodged asylum claims based on the mainland's "one child"
policy. If they were not so pathetic, their claims would be
laughable - the men are not married and have no children.
In Canada, many of the Fujianese who have been detected by
immigration officials have claimed asylum so they can be released
and free to work. The same situation applies in the US, says Mr
Delisle. "More than 90 per cent do not turn up for their refugee
hearing."
The most well-known routes in the past have been to the US - most
travel by sea, with a smaller number by air. Fujianese from smaller
towns and the countryside and migrants from neighbouring provinces
converge on the capital, Fuzhou, where they are kept in cheap hotels
by local snakehead organisers. Although they have usually agreed on
their destination with the gangs, the method of travel is kept
secret until the last minute.
Driving the wave of illegal migration is a combination of hope,
ambition and greed. Emigration from Fujian province is not a new
phenomenon. The Chinese diaspora of Southeast Asia has been
populated by Fujianese and Hakka migrants as well as Guangdong
natives over the past couple of hundred years.
The goldfields of North America and Australia last century were
another destination.
The open China of Deng Xiaoping allowed a new generation to begin
slipping out the door in the 1980s. The massive outflow came to
international attention on June 6, 1993, when the Golden Venture
cargo ship with more than 300 illegal immigrants aboard ran aground
in New York. Ten died while trying to swim ashore.
Modern immigrants from the area surrounding Fuzhou have been
spurred to make the trip after seeing the wealth accumulated by
relatives or neighbours in Chinatowns around the world. Often
unemployed or working in labouring jobs for perhaps 100 yuan to 200
yuan (about HK$93-186) a month, they are desperate to make money.
In the village of Houyu, modern five-storey mansions with
satellite dishes rise among old houses, doors locked while the
owners are abroad. Elderly folk mind their grandchildren while the
parents work overseas. The streets are empty of people of working
age.
The phenomenon is due to the increased mobility of Chinese
society, with rural workers moving into cities and those in the city
imbued with an entrepreneurial desire to go elsewhere, says Mr
Helton.
"I think it's desperation and hope on one hand, and on the other
hand those that are organising this trade are greedy.
"There are organisations and smugglers who are motivated by
profit. From time to time, these people decide to put their lives
into the hands of unscrupulous smugglers, who abandon them to their
fates."
Glenn Schloss (schloss@scmp.com) is a staff
writer for the Post's Editorial Pages. |