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| HUMAN CARGO | |
 June 20, 2000  | |
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Three experts discuss the danger and increasing popularity of smuggling humans across international borders.
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MARK PUGASH, Kent county Police: Just before midnight, Customs officials stopped the truck, searched it, and found to their absolute horror what turned out to be 58 dead bodies inside. GWEN IFILL: British Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to crack down on what has become a growth industry, the smuggling of human cargo.
GWEN
IFILL: Western immigration officials estimate that Chinese stowaways often pay
up to $70,000 each for such journeys. Experts say human smuggling grosses $10
billion a year for the international crime gangs who sneak people into affluent
countries -- countries like Britain, Germany, and the United States, where illegal
immigration is on the rise. In 1993, one ship dumped 240 illegal refugees from
MELVIN AUSTIN: The ones that came out of that container were in bad shape. Seven of the fifteen that survived had to be hospitalized to get them back to good health. The other eight did come in here, but they also were dehydrated. They needed to be... you know, they needed good nourishment, they needed plenty of fluids.
GWEN IFILL: For more on the causes and implications of this
issue we're joined by Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights; David Bachman, chairman of the China Studies Program at the University
of Washington; and Demetrios Papademetriou, co-director of the International Migration
Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Mrs. Robinson, we are hearing more and more of these smuggling incidents. Why is that? |  | ||||||||||||||||||
| International response to human smuggling | ||||||||||||||||||||
 MARY
ROBINSON: I'm afraid it's an enormous problem -- the trafficking in migrants,
the trafficking in women for purposes of prostitution and sex; the trafficking
in children. And it is a huge world problem with huge criminal gangs, and it is
being addressed in various ways, but we need to have much more of a sense of urgency.
GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about those various ways. What is or what should be the international response? MARY ROBINSON: There are different international responses. There was a problem in the seventies of trafficking from countries in Africa into France and scandals, such as the terrible incident in Dover, where fifty-four men and four women were found suffocated to death. These are the kind of incidents that draw attention to a problem that's getting worse. And that led to an international convention on migrant workers and their families. That convention was adopted by consensus in the context of the United Nations, but as yet only twelve countries have ratified it, and it won't come into effect until twenty countries ratify it. Meanwhile, there is work going on at the moment in Vienna on two protocols -- one on smuggling of migrants -- precisely the issue that came to the terrible tragic attention in Dover this week -- and the other -- trafficking of persons and for purposes of prostitution. There are very complex issues. I'm aware, for example, of how much it was an issue in the Beijing Plus Five Review, the review of the World Conference on Women, because there is a concern that women could become victims all the more, depending on how we approach the problem of trafficking of women for the purposes of prostitution. Similarly, trafficking of undocumented migrants -- it's very often the migrants who suffer because of border controls -- and get trapped into a worse situation. So we have to have human rights principles at the forefront as we address this problem. |  | |||||||||||||||||||
| Immigrants and stowaways from China | ||||||||||||||||||||
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DAVID BACHMAN: Well, China faces a huge number of people on a very limited land base; they have a sense of rising expectations. China is growing very quickly, but there are still not enough opportunities to go around. In the particular case of Fujian Province, this is the center for Chinese immigration for the last five hundred years almost. So there are historical traditions and understandings that you go abroad to make your fortune, send it back to your family, and they do well by that. So there are a variety of things coming together, plus in the particular case of Fujian there's been a major case of corruption at the very highest levels of the government suggesting there are ties between criminal gangs and officialdom that have been in cahoots with this type of operation. GWEN IFILL: Tell us a little bit more about Fujian Province. Are we talking about the physical location of the province in terms of ability for people to be able to leave, or is it because it's particularly poor, or is it just that the opportunities seem greater?
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| Asylum for immigrants and stowaways? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Mr. Papademetriou, one of the issues which comes up once these folks get to the western countries they're aiming for is asylum. Is this a question of people coming and seeking asylum that they're able to get, or what happens to these folks once they finally arrive, if they don't meet a tragic end before they get here?
GWEN IFILL: Is there a growing concern about this, or is this just -- are we just looking at incidents and all -- drawing our attention -- or is there really a real concern that this is a growing issue?
GWEN IFILL: Mrs. Robinson, is there an international response that could be mounted specifically to this idea of smuggling of what Tony Blair called "the evil trade in people?"
GWEN IFILL: Can I -- excuse me -- MARY ROBINSON: The developed countries that are resisting this, even though in 1990, following shocking incidents of Africans being smuggled into France and dying en route, and drowning on boats, they were so ashamed they came to a consensus on this convention, but now they have not implemented it; it has economic implications. Migration is a most relevant issue to the whole question of globalization. We have free movement of capital and free movement of goods. We do not have free movement of people. And this is causing huge shocking incidents of criminalization of trafficking of migrants and abuse of people. Some migrants learn that they can apply for asylum; very many others don't even learn that they might possibly be able to apply for asylum. They become modern slaves. We shouldn't underestimate this. | ||||||||||||||||||||
| Human rights issues | ||||||||||||||||||||
 GWEN
IFILL: You just started to touch on where I was going, which is how... can you
explain to us exactly how this becomes a human rights issue? MARY ROBINSON: Let me just describe one incident of a girl of 15 whom I met in Cambodia in Phnom Penh. She was brought by her relatives into Phnom Penh, and told she was going to work into a clothing factory. She was pushed in the door of a brothel, and for 18 hours a day, she was beaten into sex work, until she escaped. That's not an isolated story. There are hundreds and thousands of girls and women, some of them think they're going to do it voluntarily to start with. They reach a country, and there are countries like the United States, Israel, many modern countries, who are closing eyes to the amount of trafficking into their territory... and of women for sex slave purposes, or sex purposes, who lose their passports, who become completely dependent, lose all their rights. If it's undocumented migrants, equally, they lose all their rights, and far from being well-treated at borders or well-treated... and when they're found, and they're deported, and involuntarily back into an impossible situation. So there are huge human rights issues. They are being addressed, but very slowly, at the international level -- as I said, in Vienna, in the two protocols on smuggling of migrants and on trafficking of persons. And we must do it in a human rights context, recognizing the huge suffering of people. I mean, to talk about modern slavery in this century, and there's so much of contemporary slavery, and it's a reality that has certainly been very shocking to me, as high commissioner.
DAVID BACHMAN: At its most basic, it's not. It's people looking for economic opportunities. There are people filling demands for labor that are not easily satisfied domestically, for a variety of reasons. There are connections between the family homestead and people here that make the connections possible. But basically for most people, it's an economic motivation. There's a sense in China that the United States is a land of great opportunity, and as a result, there is a surge of interest to get over. And I think most importantly, on the demand side, there are people here taking the risk of facilitating this, because they think they're going to make a lot of money, and unfortunately, in most cases, they do. GWEN IFILL: So there is an economic incentive on this side, as Mrs. Robinson was alluding to, to, maybe, look the other way?
GWEN IFILL: So, Mr. Papademetriou, these immigrants, stowaways, slaves come here, and they finally have a chance to get what they think they want, and then they owe thousands -- tens of thousands of dollars to the people who brought them here. How do they pay them off?
GWEN IFILL: And Mrs. Robinson, finally and briefly, is there something that this event that we saw unfold in Britain... is that something that's going to spur people to action? What happens next?
GWEN IFILL: Thank you all very much. |  | |||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN
IFILL: British authorities made a gruesome discovery yesterday during a routine
border inspection at the port city of Dover: fifty-four men and four women dead
of suffocation in the back of a delivery truck. There were only two survivors
among the dozens who were being smuggled into the country, officials said, from
the southern Chinese province of Fujian. The Dutch-registered freight truck, also
carrying a load of tomatoes, had been locked shut, its refrigeration unit switched
off. 
TONY
BLAIR: We're obviously still awaiting details of what has happened, and it's the
subject, of course, of a major criminal investigation. But it underlines once
again the importance of stamping out what is an evil trade in people. 
Fujian
Province at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, then sailed back
into international waters. A few months later, a freighter, the "Golden Venture,"
ran aground near New York City. The almost 300 Chinese stowaways on board had
spent 114 days at sea. Too often, the stowaways risk life and limb to make their
dangerous journeys. In January, 15 Chinese men emerged from a metal cargo container
after the Cape May freighter docked in Seattle. Three more were found dead inside.
GWEN
IFILL: Officials say that up to 100,000 Chinese flee to the West each year, heading
for jobs in flourishing Chinese immigrant communities like New York and London.
GWEN
IFILL: Mr. Bachman, even though we have heard about similar cases like this in
other countries involving immigrants from other countries, we are hearing more
and more about Chinese immigrants or Chinese stowaways. Why China?
DAVID
BACHMAN: The opportunities are greater. Fujian is on a per capita basis the sixth
richest province in China. It's the province just Northeast of Guangdong, the
province that borders on Hong Kong, so, in that sense, it's been one of the great
beneficiaries of the open door policy, and it has grown very rapidly over the
last ten or fifteen years, so it's clearly not the sense that Fujian is particularly
poor. Indeed, it takes so much money to get these people out that it has to be
from one of these richer provinces before you can do it -- if you're going to
put down twenty or thirty or more thousand dollars to be smuggled out of China,
you're not going to do it from the very poorest parts of China.
DEMETRIOS
PAPADEMETRIOU: Well, most of them will lodge the claim of asylum, and I suspect
in the overwhelming majority of those cases that asylum, that application is going
to be denied. This is fairly uniform across advanced industrial society. Now,
clearly, in the case of the United States since 1996 we have created a small opening
for people who can persuade examiners from the INS and the Immigration & Naturalization
Service and/or judges of the service that they are fleeing China because of persecution
of one sort or another. Again, very few of us will be able to make a successful
claim on this.
DEMETRIOS
PAPADEMETRIOU: I think it is a realization that is emerging across all national
capitals in the advanced world that this is a growing problem. It is not isolated
examples any longer, as it used to be earlier in the 1990s. And increasingly,
the syndicates that are probably behind this entire effort are becoming more sophisticated
and more diversified, so instead of using large votes that may start at point
A and then meander through -- you know -- a thousand ports of call before they
actually find an opportunity to come to the United States or Canada or places
in Europe you now have this container business because that has been identified
somehow as a weak link in the chain of responses that the West has used against
most illegal immigration but particularly the organized smuggling aspect of illegal
immigration.
MARY
ROBINSON: It is an evil trade and it raises huge human rights problems and also
state responsibility. As I mentioned, there are a number of ways in which it can
be and should be addressed. First of all, I believe that the international convention
on migrant workers and their families should be ratified and my office is supporting
a campaign for that.
GWEN
IFILL: Mr. Bachman, is this different than what is happening, especially with
the China immigrant stowaway slave trade -- whatever term you want to use -- is
it different from what we see coming into our borders, for instance, from Latin
America? 
DAVID
BACHMAN: Indeed. And then stories I've seen about the British case, much of the
food processing industry, slaughterhouses, are being staffed by these illegal
immigrants, who are picked up by employment firms, and the big supermarket chains
are hiring through these employment chains, and they put the people into the fields
or the slaughterhouses. 
DEMETRIOS
PAPADEMETRIOU: By becoming, effectively, indentured servants. And you were asking
earlier what is the human rights angle on this, and I think that there is nothing
more perverse than what happens to these people in the kinds of relationships...
that these particular arrangements through the smuggling networks, et cetera,
et cetera, create. These people are not able to pay more than a down payment,
and probably a small down payment on the fantastic, enormous fees that the smuggling
networks demand, which means that they basically have to work off the rest, and
the rest is probably in the tens of thousands of dollars. This is something that
we haven't really experienced in probably that scale since the 1860's, about 140
years ago. These people will do everything, because not only are they in physical
danger for their own safety and life to these networks, but their families back
home are basically exposed to the same kind of danger. This creates the worst
possible conditions, not only for them, but also for Americans, the British workers
that work with them, because exploitation to a certain degree creates more opportunities
for exploitation. 
MARY
ROBINSON: Well, if it takes the shocking death of 58 people suffocating in a refrigerated
lorry in the port of Dover to draw attention, but really governments must take
the responsibility. And there are, in fact, very serious fights being fought in
a legal sense over how to define trafficking, and, I think, my concern is that
there must be a human rights framework because we must not make the situation
worse. And for the women, for the children, for the undocumented migrants, and
they are the vulnerable sector that we must have concern for. They desperately
need our help, believe me, desperately, and there is more that can be done. And
if more attention is being drawn to it, well, at least let's use that, and let's
get more progress at the international level on the normative rules, but more
responsibility, more monitoring of the criminal gangs, the flow of undocumented
migrants, the pressures on women, and the way in which... and the traffickers
must be attacked, but life must not become more difficult for those who have no
choice in what they're doing, particularly women, who, deprived of their passport,
are forced into prostitution or have become involuntary at one level, and then
find themselves in a terrible sex slave situation. And these are the real problems.
And there are hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, as we address
the subject, who are suffering desperately as modern slaves.