London - Several Vietnamese families fear their missing
relatives could be among the 39 suspected migrants found dead in a
lorry container in Britain, a human rights group and British media
said on Friday.
One family shared a harrowing series of text messages from their
daughter, Pham Thi Tra My, 26, according to a screenshot posted on
Twitter by Hoa Nghiem, the coordinator of Vietnamese-based Human
Rights Space.
Nghiem said the young woman's family "believed she might be in the
#Essexlorry," adding that they were "waiting for official news."
"Pham Thi Tra My went to China and planned to go to England via
France, a contact with her family told me," Nghiem wrote.
According to translations by Sky News and The Guardian, the text
messages included the lines "So sorry Mum and Dad. The route to
abroad didn't succeed... I am dying because I can't breathe."
%%%twitter https://twitter.com/hashtag/PhamThiTraMy?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PhamThiTraMywhose family believed she might be in the #Essexlorry. Her family is waiting for official news. I do not have permission to share their contact.
— Hoa Nghiem (@HoaNghiem3)
This is the screenshot of Tra My's last text and her photo, posted with permission from her family's contact. pic.twitter.com/8ErWHBPrbJ
— Hoa Nghiem (@HoaNghiem3) October 25, 2019
The BBC said her family paid 30,000 pounds (38,000 dollars) to
traffickers for her journey to Britain.
The broadcaster said it was also contacted by relatives of a
26-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman from Vietnam.
The 19-year-old called her brother early on Tuesday to say she was
"getting into a container and was turning off her phone to avoid
detection," the BBC said.
The brother said traffickers had "returned money to the family."
Relatives of the 26-year-old man, who was travelling with the
19-year-old woman, "also received money back," the broadcaster quoted
him as saying.
British police said earlier that the 39 victims were all believed to
be Chinese nationals but cautioned that "the picture may change
regarding identification" as the investigation progresses.
The police detained two people on Friday on suspicion of human
trafficking linked to the deaths.
Essex Police said they arrested a man and a woman, both aged 38, in
the north-western town of Warrington on suspicion of "conspiracy to
traffic people and on suspicion of 39 counts of manslaughter."
"A 25-year-old man, the driver of the lorry, remains in custody on
suspicion of murder," they said.
Workers gather outside a mall in Beijing after the discovery in England of the bodies of 39 people believed to be from China lays. Picture: Ng Han Guan/AP
The man, from Northern Ireland, drove the tractor unit that was used
to collect a trailer containing the 39 suspected migrants from the
freight port of Purfleet early Wednesday.
The police gave no further details of the charges against the two
suspects arrested on Friday.
British media reported that a couple who had registered the tractor
unit in Bulgaria in 2017 were living in Warrington.
In Beijing, meanwhile, the Chinese government said officials were
assisting Essex Police.
"It is still not possible to confirm whether [the victims] are [of]
Chinese nationality," said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
Essex Police said authorities began moving the bodies of the victims
to a mortuary late Thursday to prepare for post-mortem examinations
from Friday.
"Formal identification will then follow the coronial process and will
be a lengthy but crucial part of this investigation," the police
said.
The Belgian Federal Public Prosecutor's Office said the container was
shipped from the port of Zeebrugge on Tuesday.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "appalled" by the
deaths, which migrant rights groups blamed partly on a crackdown on
illegal migration by British authorities.