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| Stowaway Tragedy in Tilbury | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: 16 Aug 2014, 11:40 PM (61 Views) | |
| skibboy | 16 Aug 2014, 11:40 PM Post #1 |
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Man Dies in Britain as 35 People Found in Shipping Container BY REUTERS ON AUGUST 16, 2014 ![]() Photo (c) Shutterstock/donvictorio LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) – A man has died after 35 people, including several children, were found inside a shipping container being unloaded at a dock in eastern England on Saturday morning, police said.Two of the group, believed to be from the Indian sub-continent, were taken to hospital in serious but not life-threatening condition, while others were treated for dehydration and hypothermia. The container was being unloaded at Tilbury docks in Essex from a ferry that had arrived from Zeebrugge, Belgium. Essex police said that for the time being they were treating the incident as a homicide investigation. “As a result of the ferry docking, staff at the port became aware of screaming and banging coming from the container,” Superintendent Trevor Roe told reporters. An East of England Ambulance spokesman added: “It was a very difficult scene for our first crews there.” Port staff were busy searching other containers from the ferry in case there were more people inside. No further details were immediately available of how long the group had been inside the container or where they had entered it. Tilbury, on the River Thames, is primarily a bulk cargo and container port and not such a prime target for illegal immigrants as those on the south coast, such as Dover. Immigration and health authorities were helping the investigation, police said. (Reporting by Stephen Addison; Editing by Alison Williams and Stephen Powell) © 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. ![]() Source:
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| skibboy | 18 Aug 2014, 12:05 AM Post #2 |
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17 August 2014 Tilbury container stowaways included 13 children Thirteen children aged between one and 12 were among 35 Afghan Sikh immigrants found in a shipping container at Tilbury Docks, Essex Police have said. The group arrived on Saturday on a ship from Belgium and were said by police to be victims of "people trafficking". One man was found dead and the others were taken to hospital to be treated for severe dehydration and hypothermia. The 30 people released to police include nine men and eight women aged between 18 and 72. They have been brought to a makeshift reception centre set up inside the terminal buildings at Tilbury Docks. Police said they are "being spoken to about their ordeal" before they are passed on to the UK Border Force. The other four people discovered in the container remain at Southend Hospital. Essex Police said the stowaways are to be interviewed to find out how they came to be inside the container. Police launched a homicide investigation following the death of the man, who is thought to be in his 40s. A post-mortem examination was carried out on Sunday but police say further tests need to be undertaken to establish the cause of death. The container is being forensically examined, they added. Officers are working with Interpol and other international authorities to try to establish what happened. 'Horrific ordeal' ![]() Members of the local Sikh community were seen bringing food and clothes to the stowaways at Tilbury Supt Trevor Roe of Essex Police said: "The welfare and health of the people is our priority at this stage. "Now they are well enough, our officers and colleagues from the Border Force will be speaking to them via interpreters so we can piece together what happened and how they came to be in the container. "We now understand that they are from Afghanistan and are of the Sikh faith. "We have had a good deal of help from partners within the local Sikh community in the Tilbury area to ensure that these poor people, who would have been through a horrific ordeal, are supported in terms of their religious and clothing needs." The Red Cross provided food and welfare for the group overnight. Immigration lawyer Harjap Singh Bhangal told the BBC that the Sikh community in Afghanistan had long complained of harassment. He said the number of Sikh families had been "dwindling" and they faced verbal and physical abuse. He said: "As a result Sikhs are leaving Afghanistan, and they feel persecuted, and they're leaving for other countries in Europe such as Germany, France and the UK." ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sikhs in Afghanistan By Inayatulhaq Yasini, BBC Pashto The history of Sikhs in Afghanistan goes back about two centuries. In the 1970s they are thought to have numbered about 200,000, with most living side-by-side with other communities in cities like Kabul, Jalalabad and Kandahar and involved in the fabrics and clothing business. But the population is now thought to number less than 5,000. After the Soviet invasion in 1980, a great number migrated to India. A second phase of migration took place after the fall of communist government in 1992. And during the civil war that followed, Sikh business and homes were occupied. They were forced to leave the country with other minorities, including Hindus. During the Taliban era, Sikhs gained some independence. However, they were forced to wear yellow patches in order to be "recognised or differentiated" from other Afghans. After the US invasion in 2001, Sikhs were given more freedom by Hamid Karzai's new government. But even now they are in dispute with the government over their custom of holding outdoor cremations. Until recently, Sikhs did not have any representation in the Afghan Parliament. However, last year President Karzai allocated a seat for them, which will be shared with a Hindu representative. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 'Screaming and banging' The discovery was made after the container arrived from the Belgian village of Zeebrugge at about 06:00 BST on Saturday when "screaming and banging" were heard coming from inside. ![]() The freighter Norstream left Zeebrugge on Friday evening ![]() All the remaining containers on the ship have been searched and no-one else has been found. Essex Police said there were initial concerns more people could be inside a container that arrived at Purfleet but that this turned out not to be the case. Belgian police said they believed the lorry which delivered the container in Zeebrugge had been identified through CCTV footage. Chief Inspector Peter De Waele said it was likely the people were already inside the container when it was dropped at Zeebrugge as it appeared "impossible" the group could have entered it during the hour it was at the port. It is not known where the container, one of 64 aboard the P&O commercial vessel Norstream, originated, nor where the people inside it were heading. 'Exploited by gangs' Former head of the UK Border Force Tony Smith said those inside the container were victims of international organised criminals. He told the BBC: "They're being exploited because the prize is a passage to the West - that's what they want, they want to migrate to the UK or to Europe but they're being exploited by criminal gangs who are probably taking their entire life savings away on the promise of a passage to the West. "We really need to get a message out to migrants that if they want to come to this country there are legal routes that they need to explore and they need to apply for visas and permits." Anthony Steen, chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation, said: "It shows how desperate people are to improve their economic situation - how desperate they are to leave their own homes, and own countries, and hope to arrive in somewhere that's more accommodating, more kind, and offering them a better quality of life. Usually, they're sadly wrong." Police have set up a "casualty bureau" hotline for anyone concerned about relatives. The numbers are 0800 056 0944 or 0207 158 0010 if dialling from outside the UK. Source:
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| skibboy | 20 Aug 2014, 10:11 PM Post #3 |
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Stowaway Tragedy in Tilbury BY EDITORIAL ON AUGUST 20, 2014 ![]() Photo (c) Shutterstock/chungking By Ian Millen The discovery of 35 Afghani Sikhs in a shipping container in the port of Tilbury, UK, has sent shockwaves through the British media, as the realization of how fortunate the 34 survivors of the ordeal were to be alive dawns upon the general public and the newly-designated asylum seekers pass into the care of medical professionals and Border Force officials, with the support of a concerned local community. Tragedy had struck in the last leg of the illegal migrants’ route in the early hours of Saturday morning. A route that terminated with a passage from Zeebrugge to Tilbury in the airless steel container that threatened to become a cold and dark coffin for all of its occupants. With ages ranging from 1 to 72, the families brought their ordeal to an end by drawing the attention of dock workers to their plight with a frenzied banging and screaming from within, sadly not before one of their number, 40 year-old Meet Singh Kapoor, had died in his family’s arms – a end he tragically shared with the 58 Chinese migrants who succumbed to a similar fate in when they died in a truck from Zeebrugge to Dover some 14 years ago, albeit that the cause of Mr Kapoor’s death remains unknown at present. As I faced the questions of the media, presenters were baffled and surprised at how a container could be transported between countries without knowing its contents. Who owned the box? How can it be that the migrants got inside? Why wasn’t this spotted? Readers who are familiar with the processes of container shipping will know just how possible it is to get around what, on the face of it, would seem to be good security measures even in the post 9/11 era of ISPS. In addition to their questions above, journalists were interested to know the type and scale of the problem evidenced in Tilbury at the weekend. The two most known forms of organized immigration crime are human trafficking and people smuggling. In the former, victims are coerced and transported under duress into a life of prostitution or enforced servitude – effectively modern-day slavery. In the latter, an example of which we saw in Tilbury, victims pay large sums of money to criminal gangs who arrange for their transport to countries where they expect to embark on new and better lives or generate income to support families left behind – desperate people who will go to great lengths, including risking their lives, to make a better life for themselves and their families. The sad fact is that as long as there are desperate and vulnerable people, there will be ruthless criminals waiting to exploit them; parting them from their life’s savings, transporting them like cattle with no concern for their welfare, especially once their profits have been realised; normally in advance. A shipping container is no place for human cargo; almost airtight, subject to extremes of heat and cold and impossible to escape from when locked from the outside without help, it is little wonder that this incident ended in tragedy and surprising that it wasn’t an even more tragic end, just like the Chinese migrants whose hope for a better life ended with the sad repatriation of their bodies to China back in 2000. The really worrying aspect of this latest incident is the potential for this to be the start of a new trend, as organized criminals seek to exploit destination ports less used to the daily ‘cat and mouse’ games played out at the Channel ports, where highly skilled border officials in the UK and France conduct technology-enabled, intelligence-led operations to stem the constant flow of illegal migrants. Targeting new destinations and using new modes of transport, such as shipping containers, could be the criminals’ latest attempt to seize the initiative and combat increasingly efficient border controls and alert truck drivers who are well aware of the significant fines imposed if they unwittingly transport migrants across national borders. The sheer number of container movements and the known criminal methods of circumventing security measures that can make seals and contents lists meaningless, means that we are likely to see other similar and equally dangerous attempts to transport desperate people for criminal profit. Just like the dangerously overcrowded boats that we see leaving the shores of North Africa for a better life in Europe, there is no shortage of desperate people either fleeing war and persecution or hoping for a better life for their families. Equally, there is no shortage of organized criminal groups who care nothing for their welfare and are purely motivated by greed. If their fee-paying clients perish in the act of fleeing, then there will always be plenty more where they came from. Only by tracking them down and bringing them to justice is there any hope of reducing the number of such tragic events. Very sadly, with armed conflicts in Libya, Syria, Iraq and other nations and economic inequality across the globe, will inevitably mean that desperate people will continue to risk life and limb to win the prize of a better life, with or without the assistance of organized criminals. The challenge for the maritime industry, ports and border officials is to reduce the probability of these potential tragedies by engaging in increasingly innovative technologies, intelligence-led operations and cooperation across national boundaries to minimise tragic outcomes. Not an easy task, but a very important one. Ian Millen is Chief Operating Officer of Dryad Maritime, an operations and intelligence firm supporting managers and mariners in the commercial and leisure maritime industries. Source:
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| skibboy | 21 Aug 2014, 12:11 AM Post #4 |
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20 August 2014 Second arrest over Tilbury Docks container death ![]() The stowaways arrived in the UK from Belgium on Saturday morning A second person has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter over the death of man in a shipping container in Essex. The dead man was one of 35 people from Afghanistan, including 15 children, found at Tilbury Docks on Saturday. Police said a 33-year-old man from Londonderry had been arrested after voluntarily attending a police station in Essex. He is due to be questioned by detectives later. The suspect has also been arrested on suspicion of facilitating illegal entry into the UK. A 34-year-old man from Limavady, who was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) on Tuesday at Banbridge, County Down, is due to arrive in England later for questioning. The migrants arrived in the UK on Saturday on a ship from Belgium and were said by police to be victims of people trafficking. ![]() Essex Police released a picture of the container the group was found in at Tilbury Docks They were discovered after dock workers heard banging and screaming coming from one of the containers. Those found inside were taken to hospital, with many suffering from the effects of severe dehydration and hypothermia. The dead man has been named as Meet Singh Kapoor. He was 40 years old. Initial post-mortem tests have proved inconclusive. ![]() Many of the group had severe dehydration and hypothermia when they were found by dock workers The 34 survivors include 10 men, nine women and 15 children, with their ages ranging from one to 72. They are all in the care of the Home Office after being discharged from hospital and questioned by police. They are seeking asylum in the UK. It is believed the group was in the container for about 18 hours. Source:
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LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) – A man has died after 35 people, including several children, were found inside a shipping container being unloaded at a dock in eastern England on Saturday morning, police said.











3:24 PM Jul 11