A community is in mourning. A community led by Father Anthony Dang Hui Nam cries and prays for the lost and possibly dead. It is a small and remote community of Yen Thanh, in northern-central Vietnam.
Father Anthony said: “The whole district is covered in sorrow. I’m still collecting contact details for all the victims’ families, and will hold a ceremony to pray for them tonight. This is a catastrophe for our community.”
On Wednesday, 39 bodies (31 men and 8 women) were discovered in a truck container at an industrial site in Grays, about 32 km east of central London. It is believed that the dead are largely Chinese from China and Vietnamese.
It reports: “The Chinese have a history of emigration in search of a better life. Seeking their fortunes abroad, they established communities around the world. This type of migration was known to the Chinese as “tao sheng huo”, which roughly translates to seeking a life.”"
And stripped of all euphemisms, this is called modern slavery. It is rampant because it is an extremely profitable trade. It is in fact a win-win for the traffickers, but deadly for the ones being traded like chattels.
How it works is that the victims’ loved ones - mostly parents - would pay upfront, some even pay a hefty fee of US$40,000, to the traffickers to get their child aboard illegally.
They are enticed to pay because the traffickers visit their homes and promise them, or their children, a better life aboard. To these desperate parents, this shadowy route is the only hope for their kid to have a good life.
But sadly, what they may not know is that their sons may end up being sold to hard labour and their daughters to massage parlours and prostitution rings. And to compound matters for them, the debt they owe would usually take a lifetime to pay off.
Imagine that, you pay for a better life for your child and you end up not only with a debt you can’t pay off, but the one you love either go through untold sufferings as a result or die along the inhumane journey. This is what happened in a recent investigation that led to the arrest of a 25-year old driver named Mo Robinson. He was charged with 39 counts of manslaughter.
The papers today went further to report about a father, Mr Nguyen Ding Gia, who told the papers that his son, 20 years old, told him two weeks ago that he is planning to go to Britain “where he hoped to work in a nail salon.” At that time, his son was living in France.
But a few days later, Mr Gia received a call telling him that his son was amongst those who died in the truck container.
“I fell to the ground when I heard that,” Mr Gia said. “It seemed that he was in the truck with...all them dead.”
The second victim was 26-year-old Pham Thi Tra My. Her parents make US$400 a month and paid the smugglers around US$40,000 for their daughter to travel to Britain for a better life.
Ms Pham Thi Tra sent a text to her mother saying “she loved her and that she could not breathe at about the time the truck container was en route from Belgium to Britain.
This was her last message to her parents: -
“I’m sorry Dad and Mom. The way I went overseas was not successful. Mom, I loved Dad and you so much. I’m dying because I can’t breathe.”
Alas, God have mercy.
Let me just vent to say that if love could save, it would have saved every child from the clutches of evil, and from the hands that deserve to suffer the evil they have inflicted.
And if love could save, it would have saved the desperate plea of a girl who has to service more than fifty strangers in a day as she cries out within the small pen she is chained to in the basement, indefinitely.
Sometimes, the problem with this world is not that we can’t do better, but it is how much worse we can do to others whom we treat only as a profitable means to our selfish ends. Mind you, for that extra dollar, all of a sudden, at some threshold crossed, human lives, however young and innocent, become a bargain, a transaction, or a mere digit in one column of the balance sheet.
It’s just never enough. And where there is a will to kill, steal and destroy, or to heal, feel and self-sacrifice, the choice for some are just too easy because every dollar into their coffers adds more satisfaction in their pocket than afflictions in their conscience.
And if they could feel but a fraction of the agony a parent feels for their beloved child placed under such endless torment, will they ever stop and turn back from their wicked ways?
Alas, I doubt so, because to them, as long as it is not their own flesh and blood, it is really all in a day’s work, and nothing more. This reminds me of the Nazi guards who throw jewish children into the gas chambers and furnaces as part of their work duty and then return home to their wives and kids to say grace over the dinner they are about to partake together as a family.
In fact, if money, and the empty boastings that come with it, could be exchanged for a clean conscience in the marketplace, these people would have a conscience so "pure" that their deeds could be easily laundered into something highly coveted by many who want the exact prosperity they are reaping in for themselves. That is how deep the rabbit hole of human perversions goes.
But let me just say that I write this morning to deliberately end with this thought for what it’s worth: Love may not be able to save a child from certain end, but without it, that is, without a love that never gives up, a love that is unconditional, these traders, these profiteers of evil, will flourish in a world of perpetual darkness.
In the end, I always want to believe that it is still love that makes the difference. Call me old fashioned. For what hate and greed rob, love gradually and patiently restores and transforms.
Hate and greed work like a storm, they come just as fast as they go. They are blind forces that seek only to create chaos. But love works before, in the middle and after. It stays until the broken heart is able to stand on her feet again. It is tireless. It is faithful to the end. It is the only force that keeps the good in us going and the evil in us redeemable, at least for most of us.
So, rest in peace, and I earnestly pray for love to do her work for those left behind, for loved ones and for all who courageously stand in the gap after the storm to heal wounds and to restore shattered hearts.
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