French authorities have rescued six women who had contacted a journalist from the British public broadcaster BBC from a refrigerated van. He then raised the alarm. These are probably migrants from Vietnam and Iraq.
According to the BBC, the women panicked and had trouble breathing in the truck. It was supposed to drive to England, but the occupants thought the driver had turned around. It would have been freezing in the car in which bananas were transported.
The occupants then contacted the journalist by telephone. In 2019, he had already reported on the controversial death of 39 Vietnamese migrants in a closed refrigerated van in Essex. The reporter also had a lot of contact with the Vietnamese community then and may have been called again now.
One of the women sent videos and her GPS location. This showed that the truck was located near Dracé, France, just north of Lyon. The information was passed on to journalists in France and local authorities. They were able to intercept the truck and arrested the driver. A prosecutor in Villefranche-sur-Saône later confirmed that the vehicle came from Lithuania.
The French police opened an investigation for suspected human trafficking.
