39 dead in lorry container in Essex, October 2019

[cupid_stunt]

As a lorry driver, you're legally required to check your load frequently, especially when crossing borders. There's no way you could miss that many people.

He's legally responsible for his load regardless of whether he was "in on it" or not, just like you are responsible for the contents of your suitcase at airport customs even if someone else packed it.

Err, he didn't take the trailer across any border, he only picked-up from the UK docks about half an hour before he seems to have checked the load & called 999.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

The driver may turn out to be completely innocent, and, regardless of innocence or guilt, it’s completely out of order for the Guardian and other newspapers to name him and show his picture.

But I still think it takes some explanation as to why any driver would stop where he did, on the approach road, and open the doors to check his load. Maybe there’s an innocent explanation. Maybe someone here can provide one. But as we now know, or at least massively suspect, this was a human trafficking operation it certainly looks like, or at least needs a good explanation as to why it wasn’t the case, that he may have done this under a presumably pre-arranged order to do so. Unless he was forced to.

I’m open to being wrong. But that stopping place looks suspicious.

Judging by the specific nature of the other arrests if we must speculate, I would say the driver has spilled his guts.

But really we don’t know, might be best to wait until plod finishes their thing, which will take longer than it will for cenobyte to get banned.

 

[stuff_it]

Err, he didn't take the trailer across any border, he only picked-up from the UK docks about half an hour before he seems to have checked the load & called 999.

He should, by rights, have checked the load as he picked up the trailer. Not doing so and/or not reporting the dead people at the port will be enough to gain him some very pointed questions from the authorities.

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

Would there be dodgy bastards at the port telling him (not nicely) to look the other way? Genuine question, I don’t know how this stuff works. If so, good reason to not check then I would have thought.


.... and stop once at a distance.

 

[stuff_it]

Would there be dodgy bastards at the port telling him (not nicely) to look the other way? Genuine question, I don’t know how this stuff works. If so, good reason to not check then I would have thought.


.... and stop once at a distance.

No idea. I guess the whole port could be in on it in the most extreme scenarios.

 

[kebabking]

No idea. I guess the whole port could be in on it in the most extreme scenarios.

£30k each, 40 at a time - thats over a million quid per lorry load. Anyone want to bet that this is happening less than once a week - that's a great deal of money, and therefore power.

A border force officer/port worker is unlikely to be earning more than £30k - and a family home within 5 miles of Purfleet will set him or her back more than £200k.

 

[Mation]

How is it possible that trafficking people is a business? We have one fucking planet. We have to share it.

 

[Spymaster]

Err, he didn't take the trailer across any border, he only picked-up from the UK docks about half an hour before he seems to have checked the load & called 999.

Imagine opening the truck and discovering that if he wasn't in on it. You're not going to forget that in a hurry are you.

 

[Ax^]

How is it possible that trafficking people is a business? We have one fucking planet. We have to share it.

Farms need cheap labour and gang master can trick people into paying for what is basically Indentured servitude


Plus most of the population of the planet never learnt to share as children

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

No idea. I guess the whole port could be in on it in the most extreme scenarios.

I was just exploring ways he might not be guilty, although I don’t think anyone should speculate but I thought I’d give it a go for balance.

 

[Ax^]

he might just be that daft that he never questions a load kinda thing this might be the case if he thought there was 39 people in the back why would he open it unless he spotted the 20- conditions


or he just thought it was something a lot less horrible like drugs or something

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

.

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Farms need cheap labour and gang master can trick people into paying for what is basically Indentured servitude

If that young Vietnamese woman was indeed one of the victims, she wasn't destined to be working on a farm to pay off the debt her family incurred.

What a grim, grim business.

Here's a local example from last year Escaped trafficking victim found in Dunblane street

 

[Ax^]

What she paid for was not what she was getting

preying on the desperate is what these guys do

once you locked in with them..

well it is a grim business

 

[Humberto]

The illicit sex trade is driven to some extent by human trafficking. By which I mean, as others have iterated, they promise them this good job which will help their family and themselves, then once the traffickers have their passports and documents they 'own' them. "If you run away then we know where your families live". Its sickeningly evil, but I don't pretend to be an authority.

 

[Saul Goodman]

It's doesn't take a genius to work it out, but one will explain, anyway .

How do you think the other people in the chain got caught so quickly? The driver got arrested, got told he was going to spend 20+ years inside, and spilled his guts. That's how everyone else involved was arrested so quickly.
The driver absolutely knew what he was doing. He just wasn't expecting to get caught with a trailer of dead people and get told he's going to spend 20+ years inside for his efforts. So he spilled his guts.

 

[MrSki]

It's doesn't take a genius to work it out, but one will explain, anyway .

How do you think the other people in the chain got caught so quickly? The driver got arrested, got told he was going to spend 20+ years inside, and spilled his guts. That's how everyone else involved was arrested so quickly.
The driver absolutely knew what he was doing. He just wasn't expecting to get caught with a trailer of dead people and get told he's going to spend 20+ years inside for his efforts. So he spilled his guts.

Equally they might have looked at his phone history.

 

[Ax^]

and did the police use tactical restraint on the driver

seeming as you appear to be looking for a finish

 

[Mation]

What she paid for was not what she was getting

preying on the desperate is what these guys do

once you locked in with them..

well it is a grim business

Yeah. Why can't people play nicely and respect immigration laws instead of doing grim business.

 

[8ball]

Yeah. Why can't people play nicely and respect immigration laws instead of doing grim business.

Fine, upstanding citizens standing up to The Man.

 

[Mation]

Fine, upstanding citizens standing up to The Man.

Wrong interpretation. The people smugglers are appalling. What makes it possible for them to do what they do, though?

 

[8ball]

Wrong interpretation. The people smugglers are appalling.

Not ‘playing nice’, are they?

 

[Mation]

Not ‘playing nice’, are they?

Eh?

 

[Poot]

Wrong interpretation. The people smugglers are appalling. What makes it possible for them to do what they do, though?

Well, borders, really. People passing a problem on and not caring. A truckstop here, a padlock there, a ferry journey. It's difficult to keep a lid on things if it keeps becoming someone else's responsibility. There is no humanity. Just hope it's not your problem when people start dying.

Lots of people are responsible for this.

 

[8ball]

Eh?

I’m just going to leave this thread alone for a bit. I saw the headlines about that girl’s last text to her Mum when I was in the paper shop a few
mins and got a bit teary (think the guy thought he’d done something to upset me), probably not going to be very level-headed on this subject today.

 

[Mation]

Well, borders, really. People passing a problem on and not caring. A truckstop here, a padlock there, a ferry journey. It's difficult to keep a lid on things if it keeps becoming someone else's responsibility. There is no humanity. Just hope it's not your problem when people start dying.

Lots of people are responsible for this.

I get you. Not sure you get me though. I'm not talking about passing the buck.

Focus all your outrage on capitalists being capitalists (in this case risking people's lives and being illegal, rather than just the former); stamp out people trafficking. And then what are we left with?

 

[Mation]

I’m just going to leave this thread alone for a bit. I saw the headlines about that girl’s last text to her Mum when I was in the paper shop a few
mins and got a bit teary (think the guy thought he’d done something to upset me), probably not going to be very level-headed on this subject today.

I know. It's unfathomably awful

 

[Poot]

I get you. Not sure you get me though. I'm not talking about passing the buck.

Focus all your outrage on capitalists being capitalists (in this case risking people's lives and being illegal, rather than just the former); stamp out people trafficking. And then what are we left with?

I don't know. But I would like to know what you think. I'm not very good at this.

 

[Mation]

I don't know. But I would like to know what you think. I'm not very good at this.

I don't think any of us are very good at this

I think that as long as we have immigration controls we'll have people trying to get round them and others taking their money and sending them into terribly unsafe situations.

I think that to focus on the latter is to follow some prime misdirection towards a symptom and away from the cause.

I don't know what the answer is, but we have at least to be looking in the right direction.

(None of which excuses people traffickers.)

 

[andysays]

Wrong interpretation. The people smugglers are appalling. What makes it possible for them to do what they do, though?

One of the things which apparently makes it possible is that the families of those being smuggled are willing or at least prepared to borrow enormous sums of money to send their loved ones halfway around the world in the "care" of criminal gangs, because they've been promised a marvellous life in the UK, but where the only real prospect (if they survive) is of indentured labour in various unsavoury areas of the black economy.

If there's anything "good" to come from this horrific case, it might be that even one or two fewer people are able to be conned or persuaded into making a similar journey.