British detectives arrived in the southern Chinese province of Fujian Tuesday to probe the deaths of 58 illegal immigrants who suffocated in a lorry arriving in Dover, Britain in June, an official at the British Embassy in Beijing said.
The three Kent police detectives flew into Fuzhou Tuesday, the capital of Fujian province, believed to be a major source of human trafficking from China.
Ben Fender, a spokesman for the embassy, said the detectives are scheduled to be in Fujian for five days and then fly to Beijing Saturday, where they will stay until next Tuesday before returning to Britain.
Fender declined to say what the detectives would be doing in Fujian, but emphasized that cooperation between them and Chinese authorities "is going very well."
"I think they only have in mind the success of the investigation and they don't want to do anything to jeopardise their cooperation with local police," Fender said.
"This is an investigation that's being taken extremely seriously in the UK and it's an issue of growing importance and one we're building up a steady series of contacts and cooperative measures with Chinese authorities."
Sources in Britain said the investigators are hoping to confirm the identities of all the immigrants by taking DNA samples from likely relatives. Four of the corpses have been identified and the remaining 51 have been provisionally identified.
The detectives are part of a team which has been dealing with the case since July.
Fujian officials on Tuesday declined to comment on the visit.
A police official in the city of Fuqing said local police believe at least 20 of the immigrants came from Fuqing. She said the chief "snakehead" or person who organized the dangerous smuggling journey has not been arrested.
The 58 immigrants are believed to have come from several villages mostly in the cities of Fuqing and Changle.
A resident in Baihu village in Changle said six to seven of the deceased immigrants' families have moved out of the village to evade people they borrowed money from to finance their relative's voyage to Britain.
The immigrants reportedly had to come up with 200,000 yuan (24,000 US dollars) to pay the snakeheads.
"The adults in some of the families are in hiding. In other families, the whole family has left," the Baihu resident said.
Villagers believe the British detectives can do little more than identify the dead immigrants.
"The main snakeheads are not here. They're all overseas," he said.
The bodies of the 58 immigrants along with two survivors were found inside a sealed truck arriving in the port of Dover on June 18 at the end of their four-month journey in search of a chance to earn a good living.
Police said the 58 suffocated in the overheated truck.
(China Daily 09/05/2000)
