2023-09-29 08:16:36
Six women rescued from desperate situation in the back of a truck in France thanks to the intervention of the BBC which alerted the police. The four Vietnamese nationals and two Iraqi women were inside a refrigerated truck, trapped and in distress, fighting for their survival.
The story began when a BBC journalist received an alarming message that people had crossed the border from France into England in a refrigerated truck and were having trouble breathing. Before the message could even be completely read, a distress call came in, “a panicked voice” begging for help was on the line. The BBC journalist, who covered the tragic 2019 incident where 39 Vietnamese migrants died in a truck in England, immediately took the situation seriously and contacted the police and fellow French journalists.
The group of migrants was located thanks to information transmitted to the French authorities by the BBC journalist. According to the French newspaper Le Monde, “this journalist received a message from one of the passengers who panicked when she felt the temperature drop in the refrigerated truck and sent him the GPS coordinates of the heavy goods vehicle“.
The semi-trailer, which was transporting bananas and traveling south, was intercepted on Wednesday around 1:30 p.m. on the A6 motorway, and forced to stop at a rest area around fifty kilometers north of Lyon, they said. specified the police.
French prosecutor Laetitia Francart in Villefranche-sur-Saône revealed that the truck originated in Lithuania and that the driver was under investigation. The four young Vietnamese women, including a minor, as well as the two Iraqi nationals, were now safe in France. The driver of the truck was taken into custody as part of a procedure opened for “assistance for irregular stay“.
This tragic story is a reminder of the dangers faced by many migrants seeking a better life, even after the terrible 2019 incident in Essex. The circumstances that lead these individuals to risk their lives in trucks remain complex and unresolved.
Ultimately, the distress call to the BBC saved six lives and highlighted the continued need to combat human trafficking and protect the rights of vulnerable migrants.
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