38 of 39 Vietnamese migrants who suffocated in a truck in 2019 were registered in NL

All but one of the 39 Vietnamese people who died in a refrigerated truck while being smuggled from Belgium to the United Kingdom in 2019 were registered in the Netherlands. Radio program Argos discovered that in the annual report of the Belgian Federal Migration Center Myria.

According to Argos, the report shows that the Dutch authorities had taken fingerprints and registered 38 of the 39 people who died by suffocation while in the truck. Their bodies were found on the morning of 23 October 2019. They had been smuggled in the truck on a ferry from Belgium to Essex.

Ten of the victims were children and teenagers. Two underage boys had gone missing from a protected youth institution in Limburg shortly before their deaths in the truck. According to Argos, one of the two boys, Hieu, wanted to work with the Dutch police and press charges of people smuggling. And while there were indications that the boy had been smuggled, the police only wanted reports of human trafficking - people smuggling with added exploitation.

Victims of human trafficking who cooperate with the police receive protection in the Netherlands, but that does not apply to victims of people smuggling. “For 17-year-old Hieu, this meant that as soon as he reached the age of majority, he would be evicted from the protected shelter and would no longer have the right to stay in the Netherlands. With that in mind, he left Limburg on 11 October and joined the people smugglers who took him to Essex via Brussels,” Argos reported.

The Myria report showed that well-organized international criminal networks are behind this people smuggling, according to Argos. In addition to the Essex tragedy, these networks have been linked to 156 other people smuggling cases between May 2018 and May 2020. And the smuggling did not stop after the deaths of 39 people in that refrigerated truck. Though the smugglers have increased their prices, the radio program reported.

In March 2020, the National Rapporteur on Human Trafficking and Sexual Violence against Children reported that 97 percent of Vietnamese children taken in by the protected asylum shelter in the Netherlands had disappeared. "The suspicion that a large proportion of these children fall into the hands of human traffickers or people smugglers have been confirmed," then-Rapporteur Herman Bolhaar said.

Earlier that month, Argos reported that the Dutch government had known since 2015 that Vietnamese children were disappearing from asylum shelters in the Netherlands.