Trafficking of Human Beings And Smuggling of Migrants

Abstract

In June 2000, customs officials in Dover opened the back of a lorry which had just crossed the North Sea and was apparently carrying a cargo of tomatoes. However, in the darkness they found two barely conscious Chinese men along with the corpses of 58 others who were asphyxiated when the driver had closed the only air vent in order to prevent anyone from spotting them. It is believed that the smuggled migrants had each paid around £20,000 for the journey from their home province to the UK in search of work; a journey organised by Chinese snakehead gang members who had supplied false documentation and plotted the transit through several countries by sea, air, and land, and who stood to make a substantial, almost risk-free profit.