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Vietnam working with UK police to identify 39 bodies CNNAn hour's drive inland from the French coast, a dozen Vietnamese men nurse tea over a smoking campfire, as they wait for a phone call from the man they call "the boss". An Afghan man, they say, who opens trailers in the lorry-park nearby and shuts them inside.
Duc paid €30,000 ($33,200; £25,000) for a prepaid journey from Vietnam to London - via Russia, Poland, Germany and France. It was organised, he says, by a Vietnamese contact back home.
"I have some Vietnamese friends in UK, who will help me find jobs when I get there," he told me. "These friends help me get on lorries or container trucks to go across the border."
Security is much less tight in the nearby lorry park than around the ports further north. But few people here have managed to get past the border controls.
We were told there is a two-tier system in operation here; that those who pay more for their passage to Britain don't have to chance their luck in the lorries outside, but use this base as a transit camp before being escorted on the final leg of their journey.
A Vietnamese smuggler, interviewed by a French paper several years ago, reportedly described three levels of package. The top level allowed migrants to ride in the lorry cab and sleep in hotels. The lowest level was nicknamed "air", or more cynically "CO2" - a reference to the lack of air in some trailers.
A local volunteer in the camp told us that they'd seen Vietnamese and British men visiting migrants here in a Mercedes. And that once migrants arrived in the UK, some went to work in cannabis farms, after which all communication stopped.
Duc tells me he needs a job in the UK to pay back the loan for his journey.
"We can do anything," he says, "construction work, nail bars, restaurants or other jobs."
A report by one of France's biggest charities described smugglers telling Vietnamese migrants that refrigerated lorries gave them more chance of avoiding detection, and giving each of them an aluminium bag to put over their heads while passing through scanners at the border.
No one here had heard about the 39 people found dead this week.
This journey is about freedom, one said.
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China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said the 39 bodies that were discovered in a refrigerated lorry in Essex have yet to be identified as Chinese at this time.
"The British police expressed that the identity of the victims is still being verified. It is not yet possible to confirm whether they were Chinese nationals," spokesperson Hua Chunying said.
"We hope that the British side will confirm the identity of the victims as soon as possible, find out the truth, and severely punish the criminals involved in the case."
The spokesperson added that consular officials from the Embassy in China are working closely with UK authorities and that British police are "still in the process of verification."
When asked by CNN about the possibility of Chinese citizens being illegally trafficked, the question was rebuffed by the spokesperson.
"Chinese people have gained an unprecedented level of gratefulness, safeness, fulfillment and happiness over the past, over the past seven decades," Hua replied.
"If you look around the globe you will find more and more foreign friends wishing to work, study and holiday in China even more they hope live in China for a long time, so I think this is not an appropriate question for you to raise here."
The driver of a truck that was found with 39 bodies inside in the town of Grays, England, on Wednesday has been identified by a local councillor as Morris Robinson.
Paul Berry, the local councillor for Armagh (the area where Robinson lives in Northern Ireland), told CNN he learned of the arrest after speaking with Robinson’s father.
Berry confirmed to CNN the identity of the driver, saying that he was known locally as “Mo." He said Robinson’s family is “salt of the earth and clearly we need to give them space”.
Earlier Wednesday, Essex Police said a 25-year-old man from Northern Ireland remains in custody on suspicion of murder.
“I will not be commenting on the identity of the suspect of this man,” Deputy Chief Constable of Essex Police Pippa Mills said during a news conference.
Here's a photo of Robinson:
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Part of the line of inquiry for UK authorities is working out where the truck came from and how it ended up in an industrial park east of London.
Local police have said that they believe the truck originated from Bulgaria and that it entered Britain through the Welsh port of Holyhead over the weekend. A regular ferry service connects Holyhead with the Irish capital of Dublin.
"If the lorry came from Bulgaria, getting into Britain via Holyhead is an unorthodox route,” Seamus Leheny, Northern Ireland policy manager for the Freight Transport Association (FTA) told PA news agency.
"People have been saying that security and checks have been increased a places like Dover and Calais, so it might be seen as an easier way to get in by going from Cherbourg or Roscoff, over to Rosslare, then up the road to Dublin.
"It's a long way around and it'll add an extra day to the journey,” Leheny added.
