WANG
ZHAO-HUA was jubilant: he had, at last, made contact. For weeks, he
had scoured the streets of Changle, in China's southern province of
Fujian, seeking out the discreet posters that were spoken of in
furtive whispers in the temple courtyards.
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.
20
June 2000: Monuments built with money 'stolen over the sea'
9
March 2000: Drivers to face £2,000 fines over immigrants