No loophole for stowaways
(XIE WEIXING and HAN FANGFANG)
07/19/2002
Pudong Entry and Exit Inspection Station has succeeded in cracking no fewer than 14 stowaway cases.Some eight snakeheads have been nabbed in the past three months, and 33 people who tried to leave the country illegally have been detained. Beginning April 1, the country has been conducting the current campaign against illegal emigrants. Officials said that due to the strike-hard policy on stowaways, the number of illegal emigrants has dropped in recent years. Last year, some 9,465 stowaways were caught, down 18 per cent on the figure for the previous year. At the airport station on April 19, two men with fake passports were arrested along with four children. The pair were planning to take the young ones on a flight to Vancouver. Since more people are tending to goto Europe and America illegally, inspections have been intensified on those flights. On May 7, a man who was about to board a flight to Los Angeles and spoke fluent English, claiming that he had lived in New York for many years, was stopped by inspectors. He finally admitted that he had bought the passport from a snakehead. On June 23, another six people who wanted to stow away to Canada were caught. To leave no loophole, the station has also joined hands with provincial departments. On June 12, with the co-operation of police from Wenzhou in East China's Zhejiang Province, the station caught a man who was suspected of helping 183 illegal emigrants.
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