Horrific news

Fair point suziewoozie I’m sure BF do their very best with what resources are to hand. Cutbacks due to austerity measures by Gideon can’t have helped though.

Our borders are apparently pretty porous right now and departments are understaffed.

I agree it’s part of the picture Urm . I was just trying to bring some balance into the picture. The BF is only a relatively small part of that picture anyway - much work is done internationally across the globe to prevent the smuggling/trafficking long before it gets anywhere near our shores. As I said there’s always more that could be done but quite frankly mot of us posting on here haven’t a clue about what is being done. It’s like with terrorism - the Met announced figures the other day for the number of attacks prevented/thwarted just to remind us I suppose.

Putfleet is very small compared to the new and extremely modern London Gateway Terminal just up the road in Tilbury. Perhaps this is why the traffickers picked Purfleet?

If the driver knew he had human beings in the container he picked up he thoroughly deserves to go on trial for murder, or the very least manslaughter.

Oops posted prematurely, London Gateway has a good record on drug detection.

It is being reported on our local newsfeed that all occupants of the container were in fact Chinese Nationals.

GG13 has there sex been reported yet?

Sorry ‘their’

Suziewoozie not that I have seen.

annie you are not wrong, turns out they are Chinese. If they have come all the way from China it is quite possible they were dead before they got to Belgium let alone UK. All those heat seaking technologies would have found nothing. I have to wonder if they even know where they were heading, perhaps just out of China.

Thank you nonnie those poor Chinese cockle pickers came to mind immediately. Just checked, that was 2004.

The fact that they are Chinese nationals changes the whole context.

They were Chinese nationals.

Wherever they came from they were people.

Yes, it does. If it's true that they were Chinese, it would have been part of a very sophisticated operation. This article appeared in the Times in 2018:

Chinese gang charged £18,000 for ticket to UK
Graham Keeley, Madrid | Richard Ford, Home Correspondent
March 14 2018, 12:01am,

Spanish police seized phones, fake passports and thousands of euros

Spanish police have broken up a huge Chinese trafficking gang that charged migrants nearly £18,000 each to take them to Britain.
Detectives arrested 155 Chinese citizens in raids in Barcelona, Madrid and other cities across the country. Among those detained were a woman and three men suspected of being the masterminds.
The gang charged each migrant €20,000 to bring them from China, hide them in flats around Spain, teach them some English phrases and supply them with fake passports. The smugglers would buy the migrants cheap flights to Heathrow and Gatwick. Some were also trying to reach Ireland.
The organisation supplied migrants with fake passports from Hong Kong, Macau, Japan and Taiwan because people from these territories do not require visas to enter the EU.
Most of the migrants were from professional backgrounds and aged between 30 and 50, police said.

Once they arrived in Spain, they stayed in safe houses until the gang had their documentation ready. They would generally buy the tickets for their flights on the same day that they were due to leave to try to evade police.
The British immigration service and Spanish police had been investigating for three years. Detectives from the Spanish National Police’s anti-trafficking squad became suspicious after a large number of Chinese nationals were stopped using fake identity papers at Barcelona airport. The gang was arrested only after five illegal immigrants agreed to testify against them in return for entering the witness protection scheme.
“The dismantled network was extremely hermetic, structured and hierarchical,” Cristina Hermosa, head of the Spanish anti-trafficking unit, said. “They had a recruiter working in China and four people organising the operation here. It is hard to say how many others may have got through to the UK.”
The four alleged ringleaders have been charged with human trafficking, belonging to a criminal organisation and falsifying passports. The 151 others face charges of falsifying documents.
Fake passports and about €11,000 were seized, and Spanish police are still hunting for the recruiter in China.
One British immigration source said the operation appeared to be highly sophisticated. “£18,000 to reach Britain is a high figure. They are being charged for a gold standard entry. Normally it is £8,000 to £10,000,” the source said.
The UK has worked closely with Spain and its police in the past on tackling illegal immigration because it has been found to be a route gangs use to get illegal migrants into the UK. Last August more than 100 people were arrested in Spain on suspicion of being part of a network smuggling Iranians into the UK on commercial flights.
The network, which operated out of Malaga, charged migrants about €22,000 for fake Spanish passports, travel documents, transfers and accommodation, according Europol. [end]

There's another article about Zeebruge - Purfleet being a favoured route.

Yes, they were indeed people. The reason I agreed that it changes the context is because it was probably part of an extremely sophisticated operation. It's not about a few wide boys taking some cash and maybe bribing customs officials. The people involved will have millions invested in how they operate.

I agree Nonnie but there are well known aspects to Chinese Nationals being smuggled or I’m afraid more likely trafficked into the UK which are very very concerning. It just shows how the story shifts as facts emerge. I’m waiting now for the sex figures before I say more.

Crossed posts with growstuff. For human trafficking to ‘work’ there has to be a sophisticated infrastructure in the destination country as the trafficked people have to ‘earn’ their passage. The cockle pickers are a good example but widespread is prostitution.

Agreed suzie. Speculation is pointless. However, there are millions of relatively wealthy Chinese with contacts in a number of countries, who aren't eligible for visas. There is also, as you say, sex trafficking. Since the availability of cheap labour from the EU, there is apparently less demand for cheap manual workers from China. The ones able to afford £20,000 (or thereabouts) would probably have been well-educated young adults, whose families might have helped them raise the money. Until some of them are identified, we just don't know.

I just hope that international co-operation between enforcement/detection forces means that the people behind it are caught and locked away for a very long time.

Agree suzie

31 men, 8 women

But read this grow very recent.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/trafficking-chinese-women-uk-detention-sex-exploitation-a8995841.html

That's horrific suzie. Thanks for posting it.

I do know from the "horse's mouth" that BF is very concerned that its scarce resources, especially in the summer months, are used on monitoring ports. They just don't have the resources to investigate the big boys (and girls) behind the big trafficking rings.

That's why I get so angry when I read that it's just a question of tightening up border control and deporting people when they're caught. There needs to be international co-operation on trying to eradicate some of the reasons people want to come to the UK and/or why they're being trafficked here.

growstuff Once the women/men are here and held as prisoners, they are often told what will happen to any of their family members in their place of birth, if they do not co-operate.

Maybe charging and stiff sentences for the men using these "girls/men" could be a step along the way to eradicate this heinous trade in humans as sex slaves!!

No punters = No income!

Yes GG13 the infrastructure here and what underpins it culturally ie women for sale needs addressing. I am continually sickened by the support for ‘sex working’ as a life style choice when in fact, the underbelly of prostitution is trafficked women, women lured into it through drug dependency and poverty. Men should just do without or masturbate imo.

GG13 and suzie I agree with both of you. That's why I would like the focus to shift from weeding out "illegals" (horrible word) and punishing them to investigating and punishing the criminal networks. My understanding is that the police and Border Force know it's going on, but they just don't have the resources to deal with it.