The trial of five people charged in connection with the Morecambe Bay cockle-picking tragedy in which at least 21 Chinese migrants drowned opens today.
On February 5, 2004, the workers were just off the northwest English coast picking cockles, a kind of shellfish, when they drowned in fast-rising tidal waters. Besides the 21 known dead, all from the Fujian and Liaoning provinces of China, a further two people are still missing and presumed dead.
Plight of migrants
The disaster cast a spotlight on the plight of Chinese and other foreign migrant workers, many of them in Britain illegally, and the so-called "gangmasters" that hire them on low wages to do manual labor.
The trial is to begin at 10:30am in Preston Crown Court, 40km south of Morecambe, before judge Richard Henriques. The court is to select a jury today with the opening statements to be made tomorrow.
Lin Laing Ren, 28, is charged with 21 counts of manslaughter, conspiracy to commit facilitation -- an offense relating to the organization of illegal immigrants -- and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Zhao Qing Xiao, 20, is charged with conspiracy to commit facilitation and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The pair live together in Liverpool, northern England.
Lin Mu Yong, 30, from Liverpool, is charged with facilitation.
David Eden, 62, and his 34-year-old son, also David Eden, from Prenton near Liverpool, are charged with breaching immigration and labor law. They run the Liverpool Bay Fishing Company.
Morecambe Bay is known for its treacherous quicksand and fast-rising tides, which can come in quicker than a person can run. The local coastguard regularly have to rescue stranded cocklers.
In August of last year, 136 people had to be rescued after a tractor collision four miles out, thought to be the result of a turf war between rival Scottish and Chinese cockle-picker gangs. The tide in the bay can rise up to 10.5m and fall back 12km away from the shore.
Last year's June inquest into the deaths heard that victims phoned their loved ones with pleas for help as they drowned.
To confirm the identities of the dead, Lancashire Police officers travelled to China to take DNA samples from relatives. Britain's Home Office funded their repatriation once they were identified.
It is thought that at least 3,000 gangmasters -- employing up to 100,000 workers, many of them illegal immigrants -- operate in fields such as shellfish collection, agriculture, food processing and packaging.
In July 2004, Prime Minister Tony Blair's government adopted legislation aimed at reining them in.
The Gangmasters Licensing Act requires regular inspections to make sure that gangmasters comply with the law in areas such as immigration, housing and social security. However, the authority may not begin issuing licenses until late 2005 and there could be no raids on the worst offenders until the middle of 2006.
Snakehead gangs
There are still concerns about what is happening to Chinese and other workers who may have paid large sums of money to "snakehead" gangs to be smuggled into Britain, and whose presence is unknown to the authorities. In June 2000, 58 Chinese died of suffocation in the back of a Dutch truck, trying to enter Britain illegally.
The court intends to visit Morecambe Bay on Sept. 21, weather and tide permitting. The town of Morecambe is a fading seaside resort across the bay from the mountains of England's picturesque Lake District. The bay is Britain's second largest but it has the country's biggest inter-tidal sandflats and mudflats, covering 310km2.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant