Human trafficking victims marvel at fast eradicating of people smuggling in China

By Hu Yuwei and Qingmu Source:Global Times Published: 2019/11/5 19:32:02

A French anti-riot police officer tries to prevent illegal migrants heading for England in the French northern harbor of Calais on June 17, 2015. Photo: AFP



Editor's Note:


The tragic 39 Essex truck deaths put stowaway groups at the epicenter of global attention. Smuggling abroad once was a problem, especially in villages of coastal areas such as Fujian and Zhejiang provinces during the 1980s and 1990s. Since China's economy continued to boom in the 2000s and the Chinese government tightened border regulations, the number of people smuggled across the border has slumped. More and more of the early overseas Chinese smuggled out choose to return home to invest and start their own businesses in China.

Global Times reporters Hu Yuwei and Qing Mu talked to victims of people smuggling and migration experts to discover the inside of the process.



 

A relative lights an incense stick in front of a portrait of Bui Thi Nhung, who is feared to be among the 39 people found dead in a truck in Britain, inside her house in Vietnam's Nghe An province on October 26. Photo: AFP



Old problem
 

Asians, especially those from Southeast Asia, have migrated into Europe without documents for hundreds of years, experts said.  

Westermeier, an expert on migration issues at the Free University of Berlin, told the Global Times that the first wave of human smuggling occurred in the late 19th century when Europe was strong and Asia was in turmoil. 

Then, after World War II, came the second wave when a large number of people from Vietnam, Thailand and Turkey came to Germany. 

"In Asia, countries where smuggling is prevalent are mainly in Southeast Asia," Zhuang Guotu, a professor at Xiamen University, told the Global Times, noting that Vietnamese stowaways tend to head for Europe and North America, whereas Indonesians tend to head for Malaysia.

Smuggling abroad and human trafficking used to be rampant in the 1980s in some parts of China's coastal provinces such as East China's Fujian Province.

Many people from these areas told the Global Times that stowaways are often however from families with good incomes. 

Wang Jun (pseudonym), who was a stowaway from Fujian Province to the US in 2005, told the Global Times that before going to the US, she worked in a shoe factory for more than 800 yuan ($99 at the exchange rate in 2005) a month in Fujian. Back then, a ground-level employee in a US restaurant earned more than $1,000 a month. 

Stowaways who later returned hometown would bring many expensive gifts, which catalyzed many dreams of a gold rush through smuggling.

A policeman stands by the bodies of dead immigrants on a beach of the Sicilian city of Catania on August 10, 2013. Photo: AFP

 

Awful memories

Due to reasons such as their need of reuniting with family members abroad, some were hoaxed by human traffickers and opted to be smuggled to foreign countries. 

Speaking of the recent Essex truck deaths in the UK, Wang said the tragedy triggered awful memories of her own smuggling experience.

"A group of a dozen people, all from Fujian Province, were introduced to a people smuggler who offered us a counterfeit visa to Belize [a nation on the eastern coast of Central America], and helped us finally get into the US as a stowaway inside a cargo container via Mexico," Wang told the Global Times.

Wang, who was 28 at the time, endured sub-zero temperatures and oxygen deprivation for more than 10 hours while hidden in a cargo container from Belize to Mexico. 

"We hid inside tailored containers which left holes in the backside for people to breathe. When we slipped through a plenty of security checks, everyone had to hold their breath to escape from police's device for checking if the container is emitting carbon dioxide," Wang recalled.

"We were accommodated by local smugglers in every transfer station, and those local smugglers would snap a chance to arrange us to the next stop within one or two weeks," said Wang. "The residence where we stopped was nicknamed the 'duck cage' with poor conditions like shabby bunk beds crowded in a narrow room."

Most of the smugglers were from Fujian Province, who dropped out of school after primary or junior high school and had no permanent job, Wang noted. She said there was an unspoken rule that stowaways had to pay 30 percent to 50 percent of the total fees to the smugglers, and pay the rest after their smuggling was successful. 

Wang said "a fellow villager took the same route as me, but she was sold to a massage parlor in New York City by unscrupulous smugglers." 

"More miserable moments happened to those taking water routes to Europe. I heard that some young girls had to have sex with men on board to protect themselves from harassment and bullying by scampish smugglers."

"You can no longer decide your fate once you are on the way of smuggling," Wang said.

Residents in Mawei, East China's Fujian Province celebrate the Lantern Festival. Photo: VCG



More promising back home
 

"But things are all different now," Wang said, noting that "My fellow villagers in Europe believe Europe has lost its merits for Chinese to take such a huge risk to head to nowadays."

Wang also noted that China's economy is developing rapidly, while the unemployment rate in the US is relatively high. Many low-income Chinese workers have no advantage in the US, making many of them eager to return to China. 

Some businessmen who have developed economically in recent years also feel that doing business in their hometown is more promising in terms of market opportunities and networking, so many people begin turning to China, Wang told the Global Times.

Graphics: GT



"In recent years, we have indeed seen the gap between the quality of life of people at home and that of our overseas Chinese gradually narrow. Now, in some ways, they are ahead of us," she said.

"My fellow townsmen in Europe told me that the money they earn from working in Chinese restaurants in Europe is not as much as the money they earn from online-to-offline food delivery in Beijing and Shanghai," Wang said.

Legal and safer ways to go abroad such as legal immigration, studying abroad, foreign employment, and family reunion are common, making smuggling a risk most Chinese no longer regard as being worth taking. 

"As a result, the number of illegal immigrants in China dropped significantly after 2005," Zhuang said. 

The income gap between China and most developed economies has narrowed dramatically. "What's more, it is now much harder for illegal immigrants to get a legal status once they arrive at their destination," Zhuang said.

 



 
Newspaper headline: A turning page


Posted in: IN-DEPTH

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