Wednesday, July 5, 2000
Zhu wants cooperation on
human trafficking
REUTERS in The Hague
Updated at 9am:
Prime Minister Zhu Rongji on Wednesday
called for international cooperation to end the illegal trade in
humans, two weeks after the bodies of 58 illegal mainland immigrants
were discovered in England.
''The Chinese government is firmly opposed to illegal
immigration,'' Mr Zhu told journalists after talks with Dutch Prime
Minister Wim Kok.
Mr Zhu, on his first day in the Netherlands as part of a European
tour, said he did not discuss the subject with Mr Kok.
''We have laws to ban and prohibit such illegal immigration, but
the international gangs...are also shrewd and therefore we need
international cooperation to root out the problem,'' he said.
On June 19, British customs officials at the port of Dover found
the bodies of 58 illegal mainland immigrants who had suffocated in
the back of a Dutch lorry when their only air vent had been shut.
Two other immigrants on the ferry journey from Belgium survived.
The Dutch driver is facing 58 counts of manslaughter in a British
court and Dutch authorities are holding seven other suspected
members of an illegal humantrafficking organisation.
Two mainlanders appeared in a British court on June 24 charged
with conspiring to smuggle illegal immigrants into Britain.
Mr Zhu's visit to the Netherlands, which ends on Wednesday, is
his second. He visited as mayor of Shanghai in 1991.
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