Accused of having played a role in the trafficking which led to the death of thirty-nine Vietnamese migrants found in a refrigerated truck in England, seven people were sentenced, Monday, September 14, in Vietnam.
Four Vietnamese, aged 26 to 36, were sentenced to terms ranging from two and a half to seven and a half years in detention by a court in Ha Tinh province (center), found guilty of participating in various degrees to “The organization of the smuggling of migrants”. Three others received suspended prison sentences.
These are the first convictions in this drama that has highlighted the dangers of illegal immigration, with traffickers taking advantage of migrants’ vulnerability, the latter often ending up in nail bars or illegal cannabis farms in the UK. United, reduced to a state of semi-slavery.
Channel involving the United Kingdom, Belgium, France
On October 23, 2019, the bodies of thirty-one men and eight women, including two 15-year-old teenagers, were found aboard a lorry in the industrial area of Grays, east London. Crammed into a container that came from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, they died due to a lack of oxygen.
Many of the victims of this tragedy came from a poor region in central Vietnam, where families are going into debt to the tune of thousands of dollars to send one of their own to the United Kingdom, through clandestine channels, in the hope that they will find gainful employment there.
Several people have been charged in the UK, including the driver of the refrigerated truck, Maurice Robinson, and a Northern Irishman, Ronan Hughes, suspected of organizing the drivers’ movement. On August 28, they pleaded guilty to manslaughter. A third man, Eamonn Harrison, 23, who drove the truck to Zeebrugge, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and aiding illegal immigration. Thirteen suspects have been charged in France, thirteen others in Belgium.
