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BRITAIN-MURDER-BODIES-CHINA-BELGIUM
UK police say 39 found dead in truck were Chinese
GRAYS, United Kingdom, Oct 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – British police said that 39
people found dead in a truck near London are believed to be Chinese
nationals, in a case that has triggered national outrage over the people
trafficking business.
Emergency workers discovered the bodies early Wednesday inside the
refrigerated container of a truck parked in an industrial area east of
London, shortly after it had arrived on a ferry from Belgium.
Police are conducting the country’s largest murder probe in more than a
decade into what Prime Minister Boris Johnson described as an “unimaginable
tragedy”.
The local police force, who has arrested the truck’s driver on suspicion of
murder, said eight of the dead were women and 31 were men.
“All are believed to be Chinese nationals,” Essex Police said in a
statement Thursday.
However the Chinese embassy in London said Friday that British police had
yet to confirm their nationality, a day after a consular official travelled
to Essex.
An embassy spokesperson earlier said Chinese authorities had read the
reports with a “heavy heart” and were in close contact with police “to seek
clarification and confirmation”.
The deaths echoed the discovery of 58 Chinese immigrants hidden in a Dutch
truck in the English port of Dover in 2000. Only two survived.
“It (has) happened elsewhere but it makes you more shocked that it could
happen in your area,” May Lovett, a 33-year-old owner of a cafe by the local
docks, told AFP.
“I don’t know how people can be so evil,” added Rashda Imran, a mother
living in the area for 18 years.
In China the news had gathered more than 870 million views on China’s
Twitter-like Weibo platform by Friday morning, with more than 165,000
comments.
“No matter what nationality they are, it’s a tragedy,” said one.
– Northern Ireland connection –
With the help of immigration officials and the National Crime Agency (NCA),
Essex Police are leading the biggest murder probe in Britain since the 2005
London terror attacks that killed 52 people.
Its officers searched three properties in Northern Ireland overnight in
connection with the investigation.
The addresses are believed to be linked to the arrested truck driver, a 25-
year-old man from the province, who police have remanded in custody until
Friday.
Police said a coroner would try to establish the cause of death of the 39
victims, before investigators then attempt to identify each individual.
– Belgian probe –
The container section of the articulated lorry came by ferry from the
Belgian port of Zeebrugge into Purfleet on the River Thames estuary — a
crossing that takes nine to 12 hours.
Prosecutors in Belgium have launched their own probe and confirmed Thursday
the container had on Tuesday passed through Zeebrugge, one of the world’s
busiest ports for cargo on trucks.
“It is not yet clear when the victims were placed in the container and
whether this happened in Belgium,” the federal prosecutor’s office said.
Essex Police said the tractor unit of the truck entered Britain on Sunday
on a ferry from Dublin to the Welsh port of Holyhead.
They had earlier said they believed the tractor unit originated in Northern
Ireland.
The vehicle had licence plates issued in Bulgaria after it was registered
there in 2017 by an Irish citizen, according to Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.
He said the unit had not entered Bulgarian territory since and there was
“no connection with us”.
– More Chinese migrants? –
In another incident Wednesday, police in Kent in southeast England said
they had discovered nine people stowed away inside another truck, after
stopping the vehicle on a motorway. They were handed over to immigration
officials.
The NCA warned in its last annual report that traffickers “favour hard
sided refrigerated lorries to transport migrants to the UK”.
It also said Belgium had become “a major focus for people smugglers”
targeting Britain.
Hua Po, a Beijing-based political analyst, said the flow of Chinese workers
to Europe has gone up as “China’s own policy has become more and more
conservative and closed” under President Xi Jinping.
“The survival of private enterprises is becoming more and more difficult,
resulting in an increase in the number of unemployed people,” Po told AFP.
According to the state-run Global Times Friday, many Chinese immigrants
leave via Fujian, and their destinations are usually the US, UK, Western
European countries or Japan.
Wang Yiwei, director of the institute international affairs at Renmin
University in Beijing, told the Global Times that the “chaotic situation of
Brexit” might have made the immigrants think it was a good time to try and
enter Britain unnoticed.
BSS/AFP/GMR/0904 hrs