Lorry victims unlikely to have boarded at Zeebrugge, drivers say

Row after row of shipping containers destined for British shores line the sprawling Belgian industrial port at Zeebrugge.

Some 48 hours previous, 39 Chinese nationals were hidden somewhere in the ranks of containers, waiting to begin a new life in the UK. Instead, the trailer became their tomb.

Lorry drivers and officials at the port suggested the victims would have boarded the container – likely under the supervision of people smugglers – well away from Zeebrugge’s tight security.

Daniel Ionut (26), a Romanian trucker who ferries goods between the Belgian port and Spain, said he was saddened by the deaths.

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“In my opinion, they got inside [the container] on the road. Here it is impossible. They have cameras and controls,” he said.

His colleague, Sorin Emilian (31), agreed, explaining that he was forced to alert the police last year after discovering 16 migrants in the back of his truck at a petrol station in Brussels en route to Calais.

Zeebrugge port’s chief executive, Joachim Coens, also said it was unlikely the people were loaded on to the container at the harbour. He said it would not have been checked internally once it passed through the port – suggesting that the victims would have been trapped for about 10 hours from when the trailer arrived, at 2.49pm, to when it finished its journey in Essex that night.

“A refrigerated container in the port zone is completely sealed,” he told Belgian media. “During the check, the seal is examined, as is the licence plate. The driver is checked by cameras.”

Scanner

The port chairman, Dirk De fauw, indicated to local media that a scanner would not detect any heat inside a refrigerated container.

Belgian prosecutors, who have opened a criminal inquiry, confirmed that the container arrived in Zeebrugge on Tuesday afternoon before travelling across to Purfleet in England.

Although it is unclear exactly how and when the victims gained access to it, Zeebrugge has a history of people smuggling. A lorry carrying 58 Chinese migrants who suffocated 19 years ago in Dover had travelled from the port, and drivers and experts say that the problem persists.

A group of eight suspected migrants were taken away by police on Thursday after some of them were seen trying to scale a fence at the port into a compound attached to a trucking firm.

Chinese nationals

Refugee charities in Belgium said they never or rarely encounter Chinese nationals. Migrants in northern France and Belgium usually come from war-torn or repressive countries in the Middle East and Africa.

Alexis Andries, of the Flanders branch of Doctors of the World, said better security at Zeebrugge port had led to increasing numbers of migrants attempting to board containers in lorry parking lots in the Belgian countryside.

“By closing the borders and making repression and control a way to address the problem, we will see more and more of these situations happening. Because when you increase controls, people will take more and more risks. That’s an evolution we are afraid of.” – Guardian