On 23 October 2019 the bodies of 39 Vietnamese people were found in a refrigerated lorry in Grays, Essex. Just as in the case of the 58 Chinese people who died in similarly horrific circumstances in June 2000, the responsibility for their deaths lies squarely on the shoulders of the law-makers and enforcers of Britain’s immigration regime. NICKI JAMESON reports.
Of the dead, eight were women; the remainder were male and included ten teenagers, two of whom were just 15 years old. Following the initial bungled, racist police announcement that the dead were Chinese, it soon became clear that all of them were in fact Vietnamese. Although the precise route of their journey is not known, they had travelled 6,000 miles from Vietnam to Europe, where in either Belgium or France they were sealed into the lorry for the final leg of their journey to southern England. They were dead on arrival. Both the refrigerated container which had come by sea from Zeebrugge to Purfleet and the lorry cab which arrived to pick it up were linked by the police to addresses in Ireland. Various arrests followed in the North and South of Ireland, Essex and Vietnam. The driver has pled guilty to conspiring to assist illegal immigration and acquiring criminal property, and is awaiting further court hearings in relation to manslaughter charges. Others potentially face a range of charges including manslaughter, conspiracy to traffic people, conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering.
Blood on their hands
In 2000, following the discovery of 58 dead Chinese people in a lorry at Dover, the British media was full of stories condemning ‘people smugglers’. We wrote in FRFI:
‘These gangsters operate internationally, selling passages to Europe and North America to impoverished migrants from Africa and Asia, seducing them with promises of a better life or an escape from oppression. They extort vast sums of money both before and after the hazardous journeys they arrange. They deserve no sympathy or support. But they are not the only guilty parties and without laws banning entry into Britain, there would be no demand for their services. Movement of people across borders only becomes trafficking, piracy or smuggling once that movement is made illegal and can therefore only be done in a clandestine way. The Labour government is as guilty of murder as the “organised traffickers” and “snakeheads” it denounces. It is steeped in the blood of innocent people, whose only crime was to try to enter this country.’
The same is true of today’s Conservative government. In fact, the two major parliamentary parties, which between them have ramped up immigration controls and border policing over the past 50 years, share responsibility for these deaths and all those which have taken place on Britain’s borders, be they in a truck, in the sea, in the undercarriage or interior of a plane, or inside a detention centre. All those who have died trying to get into Britain or while being expelled from it are the victims of British imperialism and its racist immigration regime.
No freedom of movement for the oppressed
Whether Britain is in or out of the EU has little bearing, as freedom of movement between European Economic Area countries does nothing to alleviate the hardship for those living outside of the well-policed borders of ‘Fortress Europe’. The EU too has bloody hands: as of October, 1,041 people have died so far this year while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to seek sanctuary in Europe from the turmoil that Britain and its allies in the US and Europe have wreaked throughout the Middle East and North Africa, as well as from the continued economic plunder of the whole of the African continent.
Fight racism! Fight imperialism!
As is always the case following such tragedies, although the political and media commentary that followed was generally sympathetic to the dead and their families, this then became the starting point for discussions about avoiding such events in future by the implementation of yet stricter and more draconian immigration laws, both in Britain and in the countries along the route here from Vietnam. Some, such as Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, tempered this with a call for ‘safe and legal routes for genuine refugees to make their way here’; however this would change nothing for all those who do not fit the official definition of ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘refugee’, as they are not fleeing specific, individually targeted and quantifiable persecution. People migrate for many reasons, including fleeing war, poverty and environmental destruction, all of which are the result of imperialism. Whilst the world remains divided into rich exploiter nations and poorer exploited ones, all these types of migration will continue. As communists we make no distinction between ‘real refugees’ and economic migrants, and we oppose all Britain’s murderous racist immigration laws.
