Displaying items by tag: 39 migrants die

On 23 October 39 migrants, including one teenager, were found frozen to death in a refrigerated container (temperature -25C) on an Essex industrial estate. The truck carrying the container entered the UK from Dublin four days earlier. The driver, from Northern Ireland, was arrested on suspicion of murder, even though he may have been the one who alerted the authorities. Local MP Jackie Doyle-Price said, ‘Putting 39 people into a locked metal container shows a contempt for human life that is evil. The best way to honour their memory is to bring the perpetrators to justice.’ The cab was registered in Bulgaria under a company owned by an Irish woman, with possible links to a smuggling route and to Irish Republican gangs. Pray for the victims to be quickly identified and families sensitively alerted, and for those responsible to be brought to justice. See also the next article.

Rt Rev Stephen Cottrell has said, ‘We live in a world where there is the most terrible human trafficking. We dread to think what situations those people were in when they climbed into that lorry. There is great desperation - people moving around the world to escape horrors elsewhere. What I've been trying to focus on is that there is a story for each of those 39 people; there is a family, and we don't know what those stories are. We have helped make the world where these things happen, and we must respond by doing all that we can to clamp down on the criminal activity that feeds on the desperation of others.’