Thirty families from four north-central provinces of Vietnam have come forward to report losing contact with their family members in the wake of the discovery of 39 bodies in the back of a truck near London last week, authorities in the Southeast Asian country said on Tuesday.
Police in Nghe An province said 18 families reported having lost contact with relatives, while Ha Tinh province recorded 10 families saying their loved ones could not be reached since news the discovery of the 39 bodies in a refrigerated truck on an industrial estate near London on Oct. 23.
Neighboring Quang Binh and Thua Thien-Hue provinces each had one family fearing the worst after not hearing from relatives. Like Nghe An and Ha Tinh, the provinces are historically poorer parts of Vietnam and have been hard-hit by environmental disaster and the intensifying effects of climate change.
The bodies of the 31 men and eight women have yet to be identified, but Vietnam's Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Cuong told Reuters news agency on Tuesday the nationality of the victims had not been officially confirmed but his country and Britain were "trying to speed up identification of the bodies."
Vietnamese officials were reported to have collected DNA samples on October 27 from relatives of those feared to be among the 39 people found dead.
Reuters also reported that British police were hunting on Tuesday for two brothers from Northern Ireland who are seen as "crucial" to an investigation because they were connected to the leasing of the truck in which the 39 people were found.
The alleged driver of that truck, Maurice Robinson, who is from Northern Ireland, appeared in court on Monday accused of manslaughter, money laundering, conspiracy to traffic people and conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration, Reuters reported.
Catholic clergy in the region who have helped the bereaved or concerned families told RFA’s Vietnamese Service that some families were fearful of speaking out about their lost relatives in the face of intimidation by police and other authorities of the one-party communist state.
“When I visited Nguyen Dinh Tu's family in Phu Xuan village, I saw a policeman there and a group of press from Lao Dong magazine and a number of visitors,” aid Father JB Nguyen Dinh Thuc, a Catholic priest in Song Ngoc parish in Nghe An.
“I saw this policeman take out his phone to take pictures of each person who was present. When I asked why he was filming and taking pictures, he said 'I'm a police officer, I have the right' in a very bossy voice,” the priest told RFA on Tuesday.
Police monitor families
Tu, 27, was one of 10 people identified and briefly profiled as probable victims in a report by the Agence France-Press (AFP) news agency. The former army recruit is believed to have travelled from Germany to Britain.
“When I came to another family, that of Bui Thi Nhung, I saw a couple of policemen arrive after I was there for a while,” Nguyen told RFA.
“Because this is a Catholic family, when I arrived, those police officers didn't come in to film or taking photos, but they sat outside. It seems they want to manage all the visitors,” he added.
Bui Thi Nhung, 19, was, like Tu, from the Yen Thanh district, Nghe An province. She had left home two months ago aiming to reach Britain, AFP reported.
“Her (Facebook) feed was full of selfies and snaps of bubble tea and noodle soup as she travelled across Europe, until her page went silent two days before the doomed truck was found,” the agency reported.
Father Nguyen, the priest, also visited the family of Hoang Van Tiep in the Dien Chau district of Nghe An province. Hoang, 18, was reported by AFP to have left with left with his cousin Nguyen Van Hung, 33 and also feared to be on the doomed truck, a year ago for France where he worked as a dishwasher.
“When I visited Hoang Van Tiep's family in Dien Thinh commune, it was the same, about two or three minutes later I saw the police arrive,” Nguyen said.
“I think there must be some administrative order, or some kind of demand from the government, to stop people from visiting those families,” he said.
“Because I am Vietnamese, however, they somehow do not cause difficulties, but if they see foreigners around there, then maybe they will cause problems or something,” added Nguyen.
British police met with the Vietnamese community in the United Kingdom on Monday in an effort to help identify the 39 victims.
“Many of the dead were Catholics, so the police called me. The families have sent me pictures – six families sent me pictures of their loved ones,” Father Simon Nguyen Duc Thang, chaplain of the Vietnamese Catholic Community in London, told RFA on Tuesday.
“The reason I attended the (police) meeting is to let the police know that the families at home could not contact their relatives, so my job is to inform the police and give them some of the information that I got from the relatives in Vietnam,” he said.
According to statistics from Vietnam’s Foreign Labor Department, in the first nine months of 2019, more than 104,000 Vietnamese workers went abroad to work, an increase of 2.15 percent compared to the same period in 2018.
State media in Ha Tinh province reported that in the first eight months of 2019, nearly 42,000 people moved out of the province. Among them, many went abroad to working illegally, the reports said.
Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces were the regions hardest hit by a major toxic spill in April 2016 by a steel plant owned by Formosa Plastics Group, a large Taiwan-owned industrial conglomerate, that contaminated more than a hundred miles of coastline in four coastal provinces and devastated fishing communities.
Reported by RFA’s Vietnamese Service. Translated by Channhu Hoang. Written in English by Paul Eckert.