In recent years the Triads have become heavily involved in the far more profitable business of people-smuggling, bringing tens of thousands of Chinese into the UK, some of whom claim asylum but most of whom simply vanish into the tight-knit community, working in the back rooms of restaurants, sweat-shops and food-processing plants. It is estimated that more than four hundred thousand people have paid the gangs up to £20,000 for a ticket to the UK in the last ten years.
Full members of the Triads undergo an elaborate initiation ceremony where they swear thirty-six oaths of allegiance to the organisation and pledge to accept death ‘by myriad swords’ should they ever betray their Triad brothers.
It is for this reason that acts of violence carried out by Triad ‘soldiers’ usually involve the victim being ‘chopped’ – attacked with meat cleavers or melon knives – to maintain the ancient symbolism. Such attacks are rarely intended to be fatal: the principal targets are the main muscles, including the calves, thighs, forearms and biceps, though the scalp is often slashed too. The hideously scarred amputees who survive are a living warning to others in the community that the Triads are not to be crossed. But knives have also been the weapon of choice for murder.
According to the National Criminal Intelligence Service there are four main Triad gangs operating in Britain: the Wo Shing Wo, the Sui Fong (also known as the Wo On Lok), the 14K and the San Yee On. For the most part they manage to live in reasonable harmony, but every now and then violence flares up, sometimes for the most unlikely reasons.
In June 2002 alleged Triad leader Mann Chung Li, also known as Michael Lee, head chef at the Tin Tin Cantonese restaurant in Wolverhampton, was brutally murdered during a mass brawl between his own men and a rival gang. The battle, which took place in a crowded casino in the heart of Birmingham’s Chinatown, had been arranged because Li was accused of ignoring another alleged Triad leader, Phillip Hung Chan, at a wedding earlier in the year.
With his smart tailored suits, dapper moustache and slicked-back hair, Phillip Hung Chan looks every inch the successful businessman. As manager of the popular Happy Gathering restaurant in Northampton, the softly spoken fifty-six-year-old had built a reputation for being polite and attentive. He played host to visiting dignitaries and local VIPs, ensuring his high standing in Britain’s tightly knit Chinese community.
‘Face’ is a key notion in Chinese society. Loss of face, which usually comes about as the result of being embarrassed or humiliated in public, brings shame not only to the person concerned but to the whole family, including its ancestors. At the wedding Li refused to talk to Chan, who lost face as a result. What to Western eyes appeared a trivial dispute quickly escalated into something far more serious, and over the next few weeks the tensions between the two men grew to the point at which it was agreed that their differences could be sorted out only with extreme violence.
On the afternoon of 25 June 2002, after a bout of heavy drinking, Chan made a number of calls to London and put together a group of fighters who were to travel up to Birmingham as quickly as possible. Within two hours a two-car convoy of nine heavily armed thugs was racing up the Ml. Chan called Li to tell him what he had done and set up a meeting. Li immediately began to assemble a team of his own, and more than a dozen hardened fighters from Birmingham’s Chinatown collected weapons and made their way to the casino.
Just before midnight Chan and nine others entered the China Palace and immediately sought out Li, who was waiting in the bar area. Violence erupted almost instantly. Terrified gamblers ran for cover as around thirty men from the two gangs pulled out their weapons and rushed at each other.
The members of both gangs had clearly been told to target those at the heart of the dispute. Within ninety seconds Li had been stabbed and slashed at least sixteen times. As he collapsed near the casino entrance in a mass of blood, Chan screamed and staggered back, the handle of a ceremonial dagger sticking out of his stomach. The fighting continued. Another member of Chan’s gang, Feng-Ching Lim, was stabbed five times, three others were stabbed and one man was badly injured after being bludgeoned with an ashtray.
One man tried to flee, but was set upon by two men with machetes who hacked into his body again and again. One blow penetrated his skull. Witnesses saw several men running out of the casino, hiding bloody knives and swords in their clothes as they climbed into cars to make their escape.
Police arrived within minutes and saw a scene of mayhem. ‘There was blood everywhere, and a full box of chef’s knives that were to have been used as weapons,’ said Detective Sergeant Dominic Kennedy.
During a three-month trial, the dock at Birmingham Crown Court was crammed with defendants, interpreters – translating into Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese and Hakka – and security guards.
In his defence, Chan, who made a full recovery from his injuries, claimed that Li was far more than a chef. ‘He was a very dangerous man. He had many men under his control. He was involved in running prostitution, illegal gambling clubs and in bringing illegal immigrants to the UK. He was a leader of the Triads. I was very frightened of him,’ he told the court.
Police uncovered evidence that Li was linked to a Triad human-trafficking gang and regularly provided accommodation and work to illegal immigrants who had been smuggled into the country. Other defendants said the exact opposite was true and that it was Chan who was the Triad leader. This, they explained, was the reason that his restaurant was so favoured by dignitaries and why he was able to recruit a band of fighters within the space of a few hours. They said Li’s murder was part of an attempt by one gang to take over the people-smuggling operation of the other.
Where once drug-trafficking and extortion were the big money-spinners, the trade in human cargo is now just as lucrative. And whenever there is money to be made, there is potential for conflict. At first it seemed as though all the fighting was confined to the long-established Triad gangs in the UK whose roots are in Hong Kong. But now there is a new, far more deadly enemy.
New criminal gangs from mainland China, particularly the Fujian province, whose members include former soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army, all of them highly trained in weaponry and hand-to-hand combat, are muscling in on the old-style gangs. Although they are essentially Triads, they focus entirely on the smuggling of immigrants and are more commonly referred to as Snakeheads – a name that refers to the way their clients need to twist and turn to find ways round border controls and immigration laws. The Snakeheads place far less emphasis on the historical and ceremonial aspects of Chinese organised crime and as a consequence have little hesitation in using firearms if they are available. And all the signs are that, in London, they are.
In June 2003, exactly a year after Li’s death, a gunman walked into the BRB bar in the heart of London’s Chinatown and shot dead thirty-seven-year-old businessman You Yi He. His death was immediately linked to the Snakehead gangs – he was said to be involved in helping to find work for the new immigrants – but what detectives found most disturbing was the escalation in gang violence: it was the first time in history that a gun, rather than a knife, had been used in a killing in Chinatown. Moreover, a month earlier a terrifying arsenal of weapons had been found hidden in a Chinatown restaurant. The haul included several AK47 assault rifles and a number of handguns as well as more traditional weapons, like serrated knives and sharpened throwing stars.
While the Triads work in relative isolation, the Snakeheads have formed strong alliances with criminal gangs from across the world and, as a result, have become far more powerful. On the streets of Chinatown no one will talk about the Snakeheads for fear of reprisals: both the murder of You Yi He and the deaths of the fifty-eight Chinese at Dover show that the gangs will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Those who risk the journey from mainland China to the UK often find themselves treated little better than cattle.
At the tender age of twenty, Ke Su De found it hard to escape the feeling that, in many ways, his life was already over. As a delivery boy in Changle, a city in the heart of China’s Fujian province, De earned just fifty pounds per month, the same as his father. With no prospects for promotion and no chance of a pay increase in his lifetime, De felt he had no option but leave. ‘In China my life was not too good,’ he says. ‘I didn’t have a good life at home or at work and so I wanted to go to Britain because you can earn good money there. Life can be good.’
The Fujian province borders the Taiwan Strait so it is no surprise to find that people from the area have a long history of restless seafaring – and of involvement with organised crime. The first ever Triad gang originated near the capital, Fuzhou, and soon applied the skills they had learnt from the smuggling of illegal goods to the smuggling of people out of China.
In many of the towns within Changle’s jurisdiction, up to three-quarters of all the residents are now living abroad. The population of many of the villages has been crippled by this emigration, but for many of those left behind the benefits far outweigh the difficulties.
To take a walk through Changle is to go on an astonishing journey. Alongside the traditional brick huts, windowless shacks and rusty bicycles are fantastically ostentatious mansions replete with huge statues of dragons and warriors, and ornate ponds teeming with goldfish and brightly coloured koi carp. Gleaming new cars sit in the driveways.
Changle and nearby Fuching are, the locals say, ‘widows’ villages’, but such is the admiration given to those who send money back from abroad that poverty is now considered shameful, a disgrace. Those who receive money from relatives working abroad are considered the beautiful people.
It was this peer pressure and the constant view of these symbols of wealth that finally convinced Ke Su De to go to a Snakehead. ‘I met him through a friend. He told me that the people he had sent away had sent back enough money to build big houses. The Snakehead told me he’d helped many people go abroad. He said he had good connections with officials everywhere, even in the central government in Beijing. The Snakehead said, “Don’t worry, I’ve been doing this for a decade, it’s no big deal. There is no risk.”‘
De’s parents paid a Snakehead £4000, the first instalment of a £20,000 fee to get him to the UK. The balance would be payable on arrival in the West – with massive interest.
Yet despite this, and that De would face years of backbreaking labour and living like a pauper to repay the debt, even a small proportion of his earnings sent back to China would make the rest of his family incredibly wealthy. On average the Chinese migrants make £1000 per month in the UK – considerably more than the fifty pounds they would earn at home. The US offers richer pickings still at about £ 1300 per month. But travelling to the USA is twice the cost of the trip to the UK.
Ke Su De left his home on 7 June, meeting up with another villager, twenty-two-year-old Ke Shi Guang, as they made their way to the pick-up point for the first leg of their long journey to Beijing. There was to be little luxury. The Snakeheads allowed no luggage, meaning that any clothes the travellers wished to take must be worn day and night. The only food came in the form of small bowls of nuts and rice, handed out by agents who met the travellers at pre-appointed rest stops. De and Guang were told that, as they neared their final destination, they would be given cheap Western clothes to ensure they fitted in in their new homeland.
Travelling with a group of around fifteen others as well as a Snakehead minder, it took only a few hours for De and Guang to realise they had been cheated. The Snakeheads had given them the impression that they would be flying all the way to England. Instead they boarded a plane and flew only as far as Belgrade.
From Yugoslavia, the group of migrants, now numbering sixty, were moved in separate parties of fifteen or fewer through Hungary, Austria and France to the Netherlands. Others traversed Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany, often travelling at night, by train, truck, even horse and cart, and sometimes on foot over remote border crossings.
(Such horrific journeys are not at all uncommon. Beng Chew, a London-based solicitor whose firm represents scores of Chinese asylum-seekers, has heard, first hand, many of their stories. ‘They walk for days through the mountains, sleep rough and swim across rivers before they finally reach a safe place to cross a border illegally,’ she explains. ‘It is arduous and taxing. Many don’t make it. Often they travel in winter. Last year I heard of one woman in her early thirties who died from exhaustion in the mountains. Some of the others didn’t want to leave her but the agent insisted that they carry on.’)
As De and Guang passed through Hungary the travellers had their first hitch. Hungarian border police kicked open the doors of the van in which they were travelling, discovered the migrants and turned them back towards Yugoslavia.
It was a minor setback. Within days they tried again and this time succeeded. At this point both men had their Chinese passports confiscated by their Snakehead minder, and were given fake Korean documents. With these they passed quickly through Hungary before crossing into Austria in a van with darkened windows.
They proceeded to Vienna where, on their forged Korean passports, they caught a plane to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. From there they took a train to Belgium and then on to the Netherlands, arriving on 15 June.
A week before the group arrived in Rotterdam, preparations were being made for the final leg of their journey. A local Turkish mafia gang, under the leadership of thirty-six-year-old Gurbel Ozcan, had been subcontracted to take responsibility for the group once they arrived in the Dutch city. All the arrangements for getting them to Britain would be made by him. Ozcan was an old hand at the business: in 1998 he had served six months for people-trafficking offences and the shipment that included De and Guang would be the third he had made that year.