WHEN Li Hua handed over £14,000 to a Chinese ‘Snakehead’ gang, he was told a better life in the UK was just a week away.
But the difficult and uncomfortable journey, through Asia and Europe lasted TWO YEARS, with Li doing slave labour along the way to help pay his way.
“It was two years of hard journey on the road and we went though hundreds of places I know nothing about,” he told the Sun Online. “We were not allowed to ask any questions.”
When he finally arrived in the UK in 2004, he was given filthy accommodation, sleeping on a concrete floor with 25 other men and put to work as a cockle picker in Lancashire.
Just a week after he started his job, he was left fighting for his life and 23 of his co-workers had drowned in the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster.
The tragedy has chilling echoes of the 39 migrants – many of whom are believed to be Chinese – who were found dead in a refrigerated container in Essex earlier this week.
Like Li Hua, the victims are believed to have been smuggled by ‘Snakehead’ gangs that mastermind trafficking operations from East to West and charge desperate migrants up to £33,000 for their illegal passage.
Desperate families left in debt by tragic deaths
Li, who grew up in a poverty-stricken province in South China, was 26 when he arrived in the UK and, like many Chinese migrants before and after, he left a huge debt hanging over his family.
He tells us: “I worked in our village selling vegetables but it was only enough to just about put food on the table. I wanted to be able to provide more for my family.”
So when he was offered the opportunity to travel to the UK, he jumped at the chance and his mum paid £14,000 and put her house up as security to smuggling gangs to ensure her son’s passage to Europe.
He says: “I paid a lot of money as I was told I could get a better job. I was promised a comfortable place to live.”
His story is a common one in the Fujian province, where whole communities often chip in their savings to send a young man to Europe, believing they will get a good return on their investment with three or four years.
Six of the victims are feared to be Vietnamese, with one 26-year-old woman sending heartbreaking final text messages to her mother.
Cops have arrested four people after the bodies were discovered in a lorry trailer at an industrial estate in Grays on Wednesday.
The trailer had crossed the Channel from Zeebrugge before arriving in the port of Purfleet at 12.30am where it was met by lorry driver Mo Robinson and his cab.
Robinson, 25, from Northern Ireland, was arrested on suspicion of murder after the gruesome discovery.
Police announced last night a 48-year-old man from Northern Ireland was arrested at Stansted Airport on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people.
Thomas Maher and wife Joanna, both 38, from Warrington, Cheshire, were arrested on suspicion of the same offences earlier on Friday.
Dumped in Chinatown
When he arrived in the UK, in the back of a lorry, Li was driven to London and left with no money and unable to speak English.
Li explains: “I was just dropped off in London’s Chinatown and wasn’t allowed to ask any questions.
“A man approached me and told me there was a job in Liverpool. I accepted right away.
“It was only when we got there I was told the job was to pick cockles.
“None of us had done this kind of work before, but we all needed the job to survive.”
Instead of the easy life he was promised, Li, now 42, was forced to work seven days a week in freezing conditions for just £10 a day.
He says: “The work was very hard, seven days a week. You had one tool to dig and hand picked cockles to fill the bag. One person was able to pick two to three bags a day.”
Sleeping on concrete floor and working for £10 a day
Li and his fellow slaves were fed bread and water and made to sleep on concrete floors.
He was so scared of the evil multi-millionaire gangmasters, that he worked seven days a week with no pay and little food.
He says: “The accommodation was smelly and cold, without heating.
“We had plain bread and tea or water for breakfast. 25 of us slept in one room, all lined up next to each other each with a blanket each, on the concrete floor.
“Nothing was clean but you just needed a place to rest and sleep.”
“Each day you would be totally exhausted, and couldn’t be bothered to cook, eat or shower, you’d just sleep.”
The workers – who weren’t provided with safety equipment like life jackets – weren’t aware of the dangerous unpredictable tide and hidden quicksands.
Li says: “We just followed orders. The danger didn’t cross our mind – we had no choice but to trust the bosses.”
Tragedy that exposed seedy world of modern slavery
On a winter’s night in February 2004, Li was among 24 cockle pickers cut off by an icy tide as it cut across Morecambe Bay.
Li was lifted by violent waves as he struggled to swim against the tide.
He said: “Everyone was screaming and panicking and crying. I witnessed people drown, sinking into the deep water and never coming up again.
“I was scared, frightened, and felt completely helpless. I thought I was going to die.
“Suddenly everything turned so quiet around me. I heard nothing, and couldn’t sense anything moving or struggling around me. It was dead silent apart from the sounds of the waves.
“I felt numb all over. I didn’t even feel cold anymore as I realised all people I’d worked with that day had drowned and were dead.”
After being spotted by coastguards, Li was rescued but as he was taken back to shore, he could see the sea of naked dead bodies of the 23 workers around him – their clothes torn off them by the water.
The tragedy shocked the nation, revealing the seedy underbelly of modern slavery here in Britain.
It was later discovered that the gangmasters they worked for were making £1million a day from their network of slaves – while the victims were only paid £10 per day for their labour.
The Sun wants to Stamp out Slavery
Slavery takes a variety of forms, but most commonly forced labour, sexual exploitation, domestic work or forced criminal activity.
The Home Office estimated that there are 13,000 people held in slavery in the UK, with the Global Slavery Index suggesting the figure could be as many as 136,000.
The UK recognised a staggering 5,145 victims from 116 countries in 2017, including adults who had been used for organ harvesting and children that were forced into sexual exploitation.
Our Stamp Out Slavery campaign, in conjunction with Co-op, has highlighted the plight of some of Britain’s slaves working in car washes and nail salons, farms and factories all over the UK.
We called on the government to extend support for Britain’s slaves beyond the current 45-day limit and backing Lord McColl’s private members Bill demanding support be extended to a year.
In April this year, a high court judge suspended the paltry time limit and said it should be subject to a full judicial review.
A lone shoe lies beside the bags of cockles which had been collected by the tragic pickers
‘I can’t get rid of the nightmares’
Even after the disaster, Li was so intimidated by his gangmasters he told police he’d been on a picnic when his friends drowned.
Detectives quickly guessed he was too scared to tell the truth and placed him in witness protection.
His evidence in court helped to convict leader Lin Liang Ren of 21 counts of manslaughter, facilitating illegal immigration and perverting the course of justice. He was jailed for 14 years – just four months for each worker’s life.
The court heard that the gang were making £1m a day by exploiting workers across England, with Ren visiting casinos while the exhausted workers dug for cockles.
Li, who has now rebuilt his life and has two children, said: “I wanted to get justice for those who died.
“All we wanted was to earn enough to survive, and to be treated fairly, and yet all he cared about was money.”
He says: “23 lives were lost – no one can bring them back. I was lucky to survive, but those families who lost their loved ones still feel anger towards those responsible. It’s totally unforgivable and unforgettable.
“The awful memories will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
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