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'I Don't Blame Anyone': Vietnam Truck Tragedy Families Speak Out One Year On

Agence France-Presse

   NGHE AN, Vietnam --Le Minh Tuan has curled up in the bed of his
   deceased son every night since the young man suffocated in a truck in
   Britain alongside dozens of other Vietnamese migrants one year ago.

   Four men are on trial in London over the deaths of the 39 Vietnamese
   men and women, facing various charges, including manslaughter and
   conspiracy to smuggle people.

   But Tuan --like many of thegrieving relatives --does not hold them
   responsible for the appalling tragedy.

   "I don't blame anyone," he told AFP at his home in central Nghe An
   province, sobbing as he spoke.

   "I wish I could go to the UK to attend the trial, and to burn incense
   in the place where they found my dead son," he added.

   His 30-year-old son, Le Van Ha, had paid smugglers for passage from
   Vietnam to Europe -- zigzagging from Turkey to Greece, then France --
   with Britain as his final destination in his bid for a better life.

   A rice farmer whose dream of becoming a policeman never quite
   materialized, Ha left his two young children and wife last summer.

   His body was found on Oct. 23 in Essex, southeast England, in an
   unbearably hot and dark container truck that had been sealed for at
   least 12 hours.

   Among the others who died beside him were 10 teenagers, including two
   15-year-old boys, and 20-year-old Nguyen Dinh Luong, who had
   desperately tried to call emergency services as they began to run out
   of air.

   Almost a year since the tragedy, prosecutors say that the four accused
   smugglers were attempting to move two lorryloads of migrants in one to
   avoid interception by authorities.

   But like Tuan, Luong's parents bear no anger toward the accused.

   "They did not let them die deliberately," father Nguyen Van Gia told
   AFP.

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