UK: 58 dead - Chinese community criminalised
01 June 2000
On 18 June, 58 irregular migrants from the Chinese province of Fujian were found dead in a lorry during a routine inspection in the port of Dover, Kent. 54 men and four women suffocated whilst two men survived the journey in a container carrying tomatoes from Rotterdam via Zeebrugge to Dover. Jack Straw, the Home Secretary, was quick to express his shock over this "most terrible human tragedy" and blamed the "profoundly evil trade" in migrants. The Prime Minister also seemed oblivious to the connection between Europe's immigration policy and the death of thousands of people trying to enter the EU every year when he condemned "this dreadful incident".
The Dutch driver of the vehicle is facing 58 charges of manslaughter (unlawful killing) and one man from Rotterdam and two Chinese living in London were charged with facilitating illegal entry, but it is the Chinese community which was not only blamed but criminalised after the events. Not only were friends and relatives of the victims suspected by police to be part of an international smuggling gang, their immigration status was under scrutiny as well.
Bobby Chan of the Central London Law Centre as well as Suresh Grover of the National Civil Rights Movement, both of whom have taken up some of the families cases, have strenuously criticised the police investigation in the aftermath of the tragedy. One woman trying to help identify the victims had been asked by the police to give information on her contacts. "This is the type of thing she doesn't want to get involved in, because that will actually have an effect on her in this country and in China", Chan commented. Suresh Grover also accused the authorities of disrespecting the families by threatening them with interrogations and neglecting the identification process: apparently, British officials have invited Chinese authorities over to help in the identification, rather than granting immunity to families and friends in London.
The Home Secretary's first reaction was to draw attention to new stringent provisions in the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act, which will see a ?2,000 fine for unintentionally aiding illegal entry (for example on lorries) and up to ten years imprisonment for directly aiding illegal entry. Then he held emergency talks with Lord Sterling, the chairman of P&O ferries, whose Stena vessel transported the Dutch lorry to the UK in order to intensify collaboration between carriers and immigration police. The deaths also triggered disagreements between EU countries on the need for harmonised procedures. It turned out that the Chinese immigrants had earlier been held in Belgium and told by officials to leave the Schengen area which "counts as leaving the Schengen space" - although the UK has joined the Schengen system it opted out of measures on asylum and immigration.
The reaction of the French Presidency of the EU to the death of 58 migrants was to call for minimum fines of 2,000 Euro's per "illegal" immigrant. The Presidency is also planning to make the aiding of irregular entry an offence punishable by criminal law, where the decisive factor is neither the safety of the migrant, nor the motivation for "smuggling". One Brussels-based diplomat said: "The beauty of this proposal is that it is informal anyway, so each member state can just go off and do it".
Wah Piow Tan, an immigration lawyer based in London, said: "the global reality now is that you cannot stop people from poorer countries aspiring for life in richer countries, but people in European states are not ready to confront this reality."
Home Office Press Release 19.6.00; Guardian 20.6.00; European Voice 20.7.00; Independent 21.7.00; International Herald Tribune 22.6.00. 24-25.6.00.