Police: Driver charged over deaths of 39 people in UK lorry

British police investigating the deaths of 39 people in a refrigerated truck said Saturday they had charged a driver arrested at the scene with manslaughter and people trafficking.

Maurice Robinson, 25, from Northern Ireland, faces "39 counts of manslaughter, conspiracy to traffic people, conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration and money laundering", police said.

Robinson was arrested shortly after the bodies were discovered in the truck at Purfleet on the River Thames estuary, after arriving on a ferry from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge early on Wednesday.

He will appear in court on Monday, Essex police said.

Three other people have been arrested in Britain in connection with the investigation, on suspicion of conspiracy to traffic people and manslaughter. They remain in custody.

They include a 38-year-old man and a 38-year-old woman from Warrington in northwest England, reportedly a couple. She is said to be the legal owner of the truck.

A 48-year-old man from Northern Ireland is also being held.

On Saturday, Irish police announced another arrest at Dublin port, of a man in his early 20s from Northern Ireland.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Britain's HSBC to help modern slaves 'rebuild lives' with bank access

LONDON - British retail bank HSBC UK launched a scheme on Monday to help victims of modern slavery and human trafficking in Britain "rebuild their lives" by giving them access to bank accounts.

The bank, part of the London-listed global finance group, said it had been working with law enforcement and charities to identify people who have escaped slavery and trafficking to whom it can offer its "Survivor Bank" service.

Banks usually require proof of address and identity documents, like passports, to open accounts, which can exclude victims of slavery and trafficking who may have had these documents confiscated or live in safe houses.

"Financial independence is a vital part of this rebuilding process," Victoria Atkins, Britain's minister for crime, safeguarding and vulnerability, said in a statement.

The service is believed to be the first of its kind in Britain and could potentially be expanded to other countries, a spokeswoman for HSBC told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Trained staff in 18 of HSBC's UK branches in areas identified as having "high potential need", including London, Birmingham and Manchester, will help the victims set up current accounts.

Britain is home to at least 136,000 modern slaves, according to the Global Slavery Index by human rights group the Walk Free Foundation - a figure 10 times higher than a government estimate from 2013.

Survivor Bank will be offered to people who have been identified through the government's National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a scheme that identifies victims and gives them support.

About 7,000 suspected slavery victims were identified in Britain last year, up a third on 2017, with labor exploitation the most common form of slavery, ranging from men working in car washes to children forced to carry drugs.

"It is a tragedy that people who have escaped their traffickers can face such a struggle to rebuild their lives," Stuart Haire, head of HSBC UK's retail bank, said in a statement.

The scheme was piloted in HSBC branches in Glasgow in Scotland, and Nottingham in central England, between June 2018 and March 2019, helping 24 people set up basic bank accounts, with debit cards and online banking.

Banks have been called upon in recent years to step up the fight against human trafficking and slavery by reporting suspicious transactions and other financial activity that ring alarm bells.

Financial institutions hold data on traffickers and their victims that could play a vital role in combating trafficking, found a 2017 report by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). 

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Indians arrested for illegally entering U.S. nearly triples

UNITED STATES - The number of Indians arrested for illegally entering the United States has nearly tripled so far in 2018, making them one of the largest groups of illegal aliens apprehended, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said on Friday.

Paying smuggling rings between $25,000-$50,000 per person, a growing number of Indians are illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and claiming asylum for persecution, CBP spokesman Salvador Zamora said.

Many present viable claims, but a large number are economic migrants with fraudulent petitions that swamp the system and can cause legitimate cases to be "washed out" in the high volume of fraud, Zamora said in an interview.

The Indian embassy in Washington and the Indian consulate in San Francisco did not respond to requests for comment.

Zamora said the CBP expects that the data for the fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30 will show "around 9,000" Indian nationals had been apprehended versus 3,162 in fiscal year 2017.

Around 4,000 Indians who entered the United States illegally this year did so over a three-mile stretch of border fence at Mexicali, Zamora said.

"The word got out that Mexicali is a safe border city which favors their crossing into the United States," he said.

CUT AND PASTE EVIDENCE

Asylum seekers range from lower caste "untouchable" Indians facing death threats for marrying outside their class to Sikhs claiming political persecution, immigration lawyers said.

Fraudulent asylum seekers often present "cut and paste" evidence identical to that of other migrants, Zamora said.

Some 42.2 percent of Indian asylum cases were denied between fiscal years 2012 to 2017, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. That compares with denial rates of 79 percent for El Salvadorans and 78 percent for Hondurans.

After Mexicans, citizens of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were most likely to enter the United States illegally in 2018, according to Border Patrol data. Indians still have some way to go to outnumber the roughly 30,000 El Salvadorans who entered the United States illegally in 2018, the data showed.

After being held in the United States, Indians are often bonded out of detention by human trafficking rings, Zamora said. They then enter indentured servitude in businesses ranging from hotels to convenience stores to pay off smuggling debts and bond fees, Zamora said. 

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9 suspected migrants dead after crammed in Texas truck, 30 ill

SAN ANTONIO - Nine suspected migrants were found dead Sunday after being packed inside an overheated truck that was discovered in a Walmart parking lot in Texas, and 30 others were hospitalized in what police said appeared to be a "horrific" human trafficking crime.

Seventeen of those taken to hospitals after the discovery in the early morning hours in San Antonio -- about a two hour drive from the Mexican border -- were in critical condition, suffering from heat stroke and dehydration, authorities said.

At least 39 people were in the trailer, including one person who was later found in a nearby wooded area, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

At least two were school-age children, Fire Chief Charles Hood said.

It was not immediately clear how many suspected migrants might have fled and were unaccounted for.

City police chief William McManus told CNN that the dead were all adult men. Authorities were not releasing the victims' names or nationalities until their families were notified.

"We got a call from a Walmart employee about a welfare check in a tractor-trailer that was parked on the lot here," McManus told a news conference.

"He was approached by someone from that truck, who was asking for water."

The employee returned with the water and then called the police who "found eight people dead in the back of that trailer," the police chief said, calling it a "horrific tragedy."

"We're looking at a human trafficking crime," McManus said.

The truck driver had been arrested, he said.

Federal prosecutors said James Mathew Bradley Jr, 60, of Florida, was in custody and would be charged Monday morning in San Antonio.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott confirmed Sunday evening that the death toll had climbed to nine and called the case "a heartbreaking tragedy."

"Texas will continue to provide protection for the victims who have been robbed of their most basic rights, and bring down the full weight of the law for the perpetrators of this despicable crime," he said in a statement.

'HOT TO THE TOUCH'

People in the truck were "hot to the touch," Hood said, adding the air conditioner in the trailer was not working.

"For those people who survived, they took a beating," he told CNN.

"With heat stroke, you sometimes have neurological deficits that you're never going to be able to recover from."

Hood estimated the temperature in the truck could have reached 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius), likening it to an oven.

"If that truck would have been there overnight, there's no doubt that we would have lost all 38 of those people," Hood said.

HAPPENS 'ALL THE TIME'

The US Department of Homeland Security and immigration officials are assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.

"This is not an isolated incident... this happens all the time," McManus said.

"It happens late at night, under darkness because they don't want to be discovered."

The police chief said store security footage showed that some vehicles came to pick up some travelers who were on the truck and who had made it out alive.

It was not immediately clear how long the truck had been in the parking lot, and police were working to determine who owns it.

Tens of thousands of illegal migrants from Mexico and Central America attempt to make the treacherous trip into the United States each year.

In 2003, 19 would-be migrants died in an overheated truck while being taken from south Texas near the Mexican border to Houston.

President Donald Trump has pledged to build a security wall along America's border with Mexico in order to crack down on illegal immigration.

So far, the project has been stalled by reluctance in Congress to dedicate funding for the barrier, which could cost as much as $20 billion according to some estimates.

US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has been to Mexico twice to discuss immigration, human trafficking and the spiraling cross-border drugs trade.

Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Thomas Homan said the incident "ranks as a stark reminder of why human smuggling networks must be pursued, caught and punished."

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Ex-pimp helps women cook their way to new life in Hong Kong

HONG KONG - Pimp turned do-gooder Kaushic Biswas has swapped the brothel for the kitchen and is now teaching the sort of women he once exploited how to cook their way out of human trafficking.

It is a total change from his Mumbai life back in the 1990s, when Biswas earned big money as a pimp, managing and selling women for sex after they had been trafficked into prostitution.

"Every night I broke down and cried. I cried because I was part of the exploitation," Biswas told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Biswas was a trained chef whose life took a bad turn in 1991 and has now come full circle. Biswas says he wants to help victims of trafficking, the sort of women he once sold for sex to be abused by the wealthy clients he calls "johns".

"Sometimes they forced me to watch."

MASTER CHEF

Born in Calcutta, India, Biswas trained as a chef then worked in top hotels. But aged 21, he changed tack, discovered the underworld of Mumbai's discos, and worked for 18 months hooking up women with wealthy clients, many from the Middle East.

"I was lost and needed money to survive. I knew I wasn't supposed to do this," he said. "Many of these ladies cried with me. They were drinking, some of them took drugs. Drinking was like drinking water for them."

Something had to change. So Biswas bought a plane ticket to Thailand to escape Mumbai, working once more as a chef, first in a 5-star hotel in Thailand, next under his mentor in Hong Kong.

It was here that Biswas feels he found his true calling.

Biswas said he found solace in a church and joined fellow believers, setting up an outreach post in Chungking Mansion, home to some of the cheapest housing in the city.

He reached hundreds of drug addicts, dealers and refugees. This led to a later project that also supported domestic helpers trapped in debt bondage and migrant women working as prostitutes in Wanchai's notorious red-light district.

"We hope to train bar girls who want to leave the industry," said Biswas. "I'm a chef. That's my gift. [I want to] use it. Whether it's with prostitutes, drug addicts or refugees."

Taste of Hope - a social enterprise launched in June 2016 with church help - now offers free cooking classes and trains some of Hong Kong's most vulnerable people in how to run a small business. There was no mention of God in the classes attended by Thomson Reuters and Biswas instead used his kitchen skills and background in the sex trade to connect with the trainee chefs.

"Job training provides skills and alternatives so that [trafficking survivors] do not fall prey to economic pressures. But more importantly, it helps rebuild their values and identities," said Sandy Wong, Chair of the Anti-Human Trafficking Committee of Hong Kong Federation of Women Lawyers.

LOST SOULS

About 340,000 migrant women, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, work as domestic helpers in Hong Kong, according to a U.S. government "Trafficking in Persons" report.

Some employment agencies charge excessive placement fees or issue fraudulent debt contracts above the legal limit in Hong Kong, leading to debt bondage, the State Department report said. Traffickers trick women from the Philippines and Thailand to work in prostitution in bars, then wield control through crushing debt repayments and by withholding passports.

Last June, Biswas began the three-month cooking course in partnership with Harmony Baptist church in the red light area of Wanchai with a mission to reach trafficking victims.

Once a week, Biswas and his co-worker Preston Hartwick teach Indian cooking to about six to eight women, including victims of debt bondage and sex trafficking.

Kat, 23, is a bar girl and trafficking victim from the Philippines who recently joined the class. About a month ago, Kat says she was tricked into prostitution at a bar in Hong Kong. She was desperate to find work to support her daughter and ill mother. For the next three to four months, she will now have to pay off a debt to the agency that recruited her.

"I'm traumatized. There are three other women at my bar that feel the same. I always feel in danger. I take a risk every time I go out with a male customer," said Kat as she wept.

Domestic helper Maria Reyes, 34, is also new to the job training. Sole bread-winner for her 10-year-old son, husband and mother in the Philippines, Reyes was laden with debt after signing an agency contract twice that stipulated she pay back more than 80 percent of her monthly salary for seven months.

"It really helps me a lot. I cannot afford [to pay for a] cooking class. I'm thinking about seriously opening my own business," said Reyes, who has worked in Hong Kong since 2012.

The church that partnered with Biswas said it is trying to help trafficked people get home to a normal family life.

"We feel that Taste of Hope's work gives them hope that they can take more control of their own future and get a job that also allows them to live with their families instead of overseas," said Pastor Chris Hartwick of Harmony Baptist church.

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