British media reported that 25 of the 39 “death truck” victims were from Yen Thanh, a poor village in central Vietnam. Although the police have not confirmed the news, the Western media has already had a large number of investigation reports on illegal Vietnamese immigrants to Europe, as they had when they accused China over the weekend. It may still take some time to confirm the identities of the victims, but one thing is clear: The stowaways died on the way from the European continent to the UK. There were smuggling gangs and recipients at the start and end of the trip. As the suspects are all British, it shows that citizens from some European countries are involved in human smuggling networks.
Human smuggling is believed to have become a large and profitable industry, with Europe being at the center. After the tragic death of 39 people, European public opinion has not yet examined their moral responsibility for the tragedy, but instead shifted their accusations on countries where the illegal immigrants might come from. Since illegal migration is a worldwide phenomenon aggravated by the gap in economic development levels, it is pointless to blame developing countries for why some of their people want to leave for developed countries. European countries can crack down on human smuggling networks and repatriate illegal immigrants, but they have a responsibility to preventing repeated deaths of stowaways in their territories. This is the bottom line of human rights. Illegal immigrants are also human beings, and European countries should guarantee those people’s rights of not dying due to extreme scenarios.
European countries are aware that they attract illegal immigrants, and there are pros and cons of the newcomers. The migrants have caused many problems, but have also provided cheap labor that sustains the prosperity of Europe. Europe, however, has never really cared about the basic human rights of those migrants, and many similar cases have happened. European countries, including Britain, have not taken sufficient measures to combat and remedy the issue of human smuggling. If these countries exert enough effort to resolve the issue the way they fight terrorism, similar tragedies would not have taken place repeatedly in Europe. It could be that Europeans feel differently about humans smuggling and terrorism, as most of the deaths caused by terrorist attacks are Europeans. The Western media believed that the “death truck” incident was hard to avoid as Vietnamese are so poor that they traveled to Europe in a most perilous way.
