A court in Belgium convicted 18 people over the deaths of 39 people from Vietnam whose bodies were discovered in the back of a container truck in south-eastern England in October 2019. The Vietnamese ringleader in Belgium was imposed a 15-year jail term while his other associates got one-to-10-year sentences.

The victims, aged between 15 and 44, were found inside a refrigerated container that had arrived from Belgium in a ferry, and were discovered as corpses. They were all migrants from impoverished villages in Vietnam and had paid thousands of dollars to the people smugglers who took them to the fatal journey, with promises of a better life in the West.

The incident follows on from the conviction of a Northern Irish lorry driver in a British court. The driver had discovered the bodies of migrants in the back of his trailer after he had collected a container from a port in Essex, England. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter and people smuggling and was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

The conviction happened after a joint investigation team between Belgium, Ireland, France, Britain and two European Union agencies, Eurojust and Europol worked in tandem to arrest the suspects.

The Essex tragedy opens a window into the secret world of people smuggling rackets. Last month a drowned dinghy carrying migrants to England via the English Channel, had revealed a possible route of transit for migrants from the Middle East used by some international networks of people smugglers.

The Vietnamese migrants were found traveling through the perilous “CO2 route” which packs people into closed containers in the last leg, after they have traveled a 6000-mile passage from South East Asia to Europe. These people—an estimated 18,000 Vietnamese people every year-- are promised jobs in factories, salons and restaurants in Britain. They pay the racketeers between $10,000 and $50,000 for a better life.

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https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-01-19/belgian-court-convicts-ring-leader-in-2019-smuggling-tragedy

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/belgian-court-convicts-18-people-over-essex-lorry-deaths-41256912.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/world/europe/essex-lorry-deaths-verdict-belgium.html