Chinese migrants held in Croatia

There, young men huddled on bamboo pallets confided, behind cupped hands, their dreams of joining the thousands spirited out of the country by the local "snakeheads". They talked constantly of the typed notices that sought out young men such as himself: those known as the three Ds: the displeased, the disadvantaged and the dispossessed. Those who lived in shabby terraces next to the walled patios and tiled balconies of the six-storey mansions owned by the rich - homes paid for by the families of illegal migrants to the West.

The posters that promised a better life with the words: "Overseas labourers wanted." The posters that would help him "toudo" - local parlance for "to steal across the sea" - as hundreds from the area had already done. As the local proverb says: "When one person goes abroad, the whole family makes money." That evening, at his two-storey, clay-built home in the village of Yanyu in the Changle suburbs, he excitedly told his wife, Guo Mei-hwa, about his first meeting with the Snakeheads, the underground "travel agents" in Fujian who, for £18,000, would organise his passage to Britain.

It was not his first choice, he would have preferred America or Canada but Britain, he had been told, was now much easier to enter undetected. The family would borrow and he would pay off the remainder once in England. Three months ago, Guo Mei-hwa drove him to the local train station at Fuzhou. She says, tears filling her eyes: "The last I saw of him was when I waved him off. I knew I might never see him again but I never, ever dreamed anything this terrible could happen. Now I am a widow with two children and a massive debt that I can never hope to pay off."

This morning, like every other since last Monday when news first filtered through the coastal villages of the 58 Chinese found suffocated amid a refrigeration container of rotting tomatoes at Dover, Guo Mei-hwa sits weeping on the grass matting of her bed. As yet there has been no official confirmation that her 34-year-old husband was among those who perished in the sweltering, sealed container. In her heart, she says as she rocks back and forth, she knows that he is dead. But she knows nothing, she insists, of the local Snakeheads who arranged his passage. "My husband dealt with them," is all she will say.

If he was in the container, Wang Zhao-hua will have died a slow and agonising death, clawing and hammering at the metal doors and walls. Doubtless, like so many of the 54 men and four women who perished, his lifeless body, dressed in gaudy shorts and grubby T-shirt, will have been shoeless when found: almost all had removed their footwear to bang on the walls in a last, desperate attempt to alert someone that the air vent had been closed. For many, their dying act was to suck dry the tomatoes in what would become their tomb.

Theirs have not been the first deaths at the hands of the unscrupulous Snakeheads, an offshoot of the Triads. In 1995, 18 Chinese suffocated in a sealed trailer as it crossed Hungary. A year later, five bodies were found in a truck crossing the Austrian border and, in January, a container ship docked in Seattle with 18 Chinese in the hold. Three were dead, buried in the filth at the bottom of the container; the survivors were on the point of starvation. All had shared the same dream: to share the wealth of the West.

The International Organisation for Migration estimates that Snakeheads last year netted more than £4 billion, and the Home Office estimates that about one million people at any one time are moving to Western countries as part of organised trafficking. Even before the tragedy of last weekend, British immigration officials were becoming increasingly alarmed at the rising numbers of Chinese asylum seekers in the past year. The £2,000 fine slapped on lorry drivers found with illegal entrants on board has done nothing to prevent the flood of Chinese nationals into Britain.

Last year, in October, 225 entered the country. By March, the number had risen to 700 each month. The Snakeheads, so called because the masses trying to migrate illegally need guidance as they twist and turn to find ways around border controls and immigration laws, are a sophisticated "travel service" in human misery. Where once drug trafficking was the Eastern moneyspinner, the trade in human cargo is now much more lucrative.

In the early 1990s, they simply packed migrants into fishing boats and left them to drift on to foreign beaches. Now, they transport them in sealed containers, often fitted with portable toilets and battery-powered lights. In the past year, 10,000 Chinese were smuggled into America but England became the Snakeheads' new Mecca after US immigration laws were tightened. It is estimated now that 200 slip into Britain each week, their journeys mapped out by Snakeheads who exploit the legal loopholes left by liberal asylum policies in Western countries.

Yet, while the lure for the Fujianese is financial, the reality is often a lifetime of poverty and debt. While a lucky handful rid themselves of their Snakehead handlers when in the West, hundreds end up working in London and European sweatshops, sold into prostitution or held hostage - some for years - while their families in China are milked of the little cash they have.

Little, however, dims their enthusiasm for leaving. Fujian province has a long tradition of migration abroad and has been the focus of the Chinese government's efforts to curb human trafficking. Few stories of misery and penury filter back: those that do are dismissed as scare stories. Yesterday, in Fuzhou, Mr Zhao, a Snakehead scout, was touting, as usual, for business. Proud of his lucrative sideline, he visits teenagers on his "patch", telling them to save hard and then come to him for help to get out of China.

Years pass, he says, before the families can save and borrow the £18,000 to £20,000 to pay for the trip. If they can muster the money then Zhao, a minor cog, puts them in touch with Hu Jin-hwa, the fixer who arranges false passports and documents. Short and balding, Hu Jin-hwa sports a gold watch and thick chain. Clipped to his belt are four mobile telephones. His modus operandi, he explained, was to leave no traces. He boasted: "None of these hand phones is registered in my name. The only time the people I deal with get to see me is at the station when I take them aside, hand them their papers and tell them how to behave on the trip. Then they go."

There is little luxury. The Snakeheads allow no luggage. Space, they argue, is money. The Fujianese are fitted out in cheap Western clothes to ensure that they blend in in their new homeland. The first leg of their 12,000-mile trek is usually a two-day train trip to Beijing where they board another train for the week-long journey to Moscow. From there, they take a two-day train trip to Prague in Czech Republic.

Though the carriages are cramped and the only food is rice and nuts, handed out by agents who meet the travellers at pre-appointed stations, taking care not to be seen with them. This is the most comfortable leg of their journey. Promised drivers in Prague, none has any notion of the hardships ahead. One Chinese man, who entered Britain illegally two years ago, says: "At the stations, the cars are there all right but they are far from the luxurious, air-conditioned vehicles promised. They are clapped-out bangers. And that is if you are lucky. Some people are crowded into the backs of open trucks, some in horse-drawn carts. The unlucky ones are forced to walk."

Beng Chew, a London-based solicitor whose firm Thomas Andrew and Tan represents scores of Chinese asylum seekers has heard, first hand, many of their stories. "They walk for days through the mountains, sleep rough and swim across rivers before they finally reach a safe place to cross the border illegally. It is arduous and taxing: many don't make it. Often, they travel in winter. Last year, I heard of one woman in her early thirties who died from exhaustion in the mountains. Some of the others didn't want to leave her but the agent insisted that they carry on."

Others, like Hu Zhenxi, who had to return to China, tell of starvation and despair. Taken by train to Budapest, he travelled with two Snakehead agents to Germany. "They held us at gunpoint for 14 days. During the journey, we were given only one meal of oats a day. Driven by hunger and desperation, I sometimes went crazy and wailed like a wild animal. In Budapest, the Snakeheads tortured Mr Hu with knives and demanded another £1,000, threatening to "kill him like a chicken" if he did not pay up.

In terror, he managed to attract a passer-by who contacted police. Mr Hu was returned to China where Snakeheads are still demanding their money. He says: "I don't know how I will survive. The creditors come banging on my door every day and my wife wants to divorce me. I don't have any money, only regret and shame." Once the immigrants are in Germany they make the final trek on foot into Holland and Belgium - both weak links in the immigration chain.

Mr Chen, who spent a year as a Snakehead driver, says that while routes are constantly changed, most involve Holland because it is so easy to get a Dutch passport. "Once you have that, if the British police catch you and send you back to Holland, you can simply keep trying. Usually, if you can get to England and you spend £1,000 on a lawyer, you will be OK. Basically, those that opt for England get in. It is just easier."

For the Chinese who perished last weekend, their arrival in Puurs in Belgium must have seemed a welcome respite from the hardships on the road. Exhausted and emaciated, they were marched into Berchten, a seedy suburb of Antwerp, where their Snakehead greeters picked them up in trucks and brought them to a tiny two-bedroom Puurs flat that was to be their home for the next month. In the predominantly white district, the Chinese attracted much attention.

Before long they had infuriated neighbours with their raucous song sessions and the constant smells of Chinese food cooking. One neighbour said: "They roamed around the town in bands of five or 10. All they seemed to eat and drink was rice and Coca-Cola. And they smoked scores of packets of cigarettes. They were dressed neatly and they all carried identical sportsbags. But it was cooking smells that annoyed us." A woman police officer who called round to the flat was horrified at the squalor that she found.

The 21-foot front room was a sea of blankets, matresses and pillows. Piles of dirty clothes were stacked around the walls. The kitchen was ankle deep in noodle and rice packets and filled with flies. Several bins were overflowing with rancid food which had lain untouched for weeks. Several more police officers were called but, because there was no room at the local holding centre, the Chinese were simply escorted to the local rail station and put on a train to Antwerp. Almost all got off one stop down the line and returned to Puurs and Bornem.

Some were again picked up by police who fingerprinted and then released them. For the next week, the unwieldy band of Chinese wandered around the town where they were filmed by a Belgian television station. No one is quite sure how their final journey, on the Zeebrugge ferry, was organised, but last week the lorry owner, Ary Van der Spek (who has been arrested and is being questioned by Dutch police) insisted that he was "recruited" in a Rotterdam cafe by two men whom he had never met before. He knew nothing, he says, of their plans to transport the 60 Chinese.

If Van der Spek is involved, he is an unlikely criminal. Friends and neighbours describe him as a devote Christian who neither watches television nor drinks alcohol. Similarly, Perry Wacker, the 32-year-old lorry driver who has been remanded in custody accused of manslaughter, has no history of Snakehead involvement. When he drove the white Mercedes lorry onto the ferry, it is believed that all 60 inside were alive and the air vent in the refrigerated unit was still open. It was just before midnight last Sunday when customs official David Bell and his four colleagues began unlocking the heavy bolts that sealed the lorry in bay nine of the inspection shed.

P & O Stena Line had, an hour earlier, alerted customs officials that a "suspicious" Dutch-registered Mercedes tractor unit towing a refrigeration trailer had boarded the 7.30pm ferry from Zeebrugge. Ferry company officials had little to go on but were perturbed that Wacker had paid the £412 fare in cash. When they questioned him about the company whose name, A. F. Van der Spek Transport, was emblazoned on the lorry's side, he became evasive, promising to fax details later.

None among the officials had ever heard of it; hardly surprising because the company name had been registered by 24-year-old Van der Spek just three days before at the Rotterdam Chamber of Commerce. a customs official said: "It was an obvious red flag. We just knew it had to be smuggling. Our immediate thought was that it was booze or fags, probably both." The instant that Mr Bell pulled open the heavy swing doors, he and his colleagues knew that something was amiss. Although the 50ft-long container inside was a refrigerated unit, the air that belched out was warm and smelled putrid.

As they tentatively peered inside, they could see the contorted faces of two young Chinese sprawled on their backs just inside the door. Gasping and choking, the pair stretched bleeding and torn fingers towards the customs officials. "Bang wo, bang wo [help me, help me]," they said, clawing at the air. What lay beyond was, said one of the officers, "like a scene from your worst nightmare." In a tangled heap, half hidden by a false wall made from wooden planks, the bodies of 54 men and four women lay amid the seven tumbled crates of stinking tomatoes.

The two survivors were given immediate medical aid and taken to Canterbury hospital. Two days ago, police, fearing Snakehead reprisals, moved them to a safehouse. It is unlikely that they will be forced to return to China but will, instead, disappear into Britain's already sprawling Chinese community to join the thousands who live in dingy basements all across the country. Most must keep up payments to the Snakeheads - if they don't, they know their families in China will suffer. Within days of their arrival, they know the inflated promises of a life of luxury were fantasy. By then it is far too late.

This week, as the grim task of identifying the 58 bodies began, customs officials in Croatia were rounding up the latest batch of illegal Chinese immigrants - 26 men, en route to Europe, discovered inside a tanker. While the news of the Dover deaths has been greeted with heartbreak and misery in Fujian province, it will do nothing, clearly, to stem the flood of hopefuls who fall prey to the Snakeheads' promises of a life of riches.

For those who must trace the relatives of those who died in the refigeration container, the task will be lengthy and difficult. Few relatives among Britain's Chinese community, most of whom came into the country illegally themselves, have come forward, and families in China are too afraid of the local Snakeheads to speak out. Some, who received excited telephone calls from their sons and husbands once they had reached Holland, already know that their relatives are dead. Others, such as Guo Mei-hwa, who has heard nothing, have lost what little hope they had.

"Who will help me feed my two children, now that I have lost my husband?" she asks, dry eyed now. For Wang Zhao-hua's family, the dreams of wealth and a better life so irresistably described by the Snakeheads has become, instead, one of misery, poverty and hopelessness. There will be no six-storey mansion.

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