Nothing like dying in your own sweat and body odor, eh? Well, maybe
worse would be dying amid someone else's sweat and body odor! Or even
worse -- dozens of people's sweat and body oder.
But the driver of the un-air-conditoned truck stopped, took one look
at his dead and dying human cargo -- and said, "**** it," and ran
away!
Actually, that was a bit of an embelished story ... you see, the
driver was headed to the Thai resort of Phuket, so a play on words
seemed in order, given the gravity of the situation.
"One man's tragedy is another man's chuckle," so Con****ius might've
said. Or was it Soupy Sales?
-----------------------------------------
"54 Illegal Migrants Suffocate in Truck in Thailand"
By Sutin Wannabovorn
Associated Press
Friday, April 11, 2008; A15
BANGKOK, April 10 -- Fifty-four illegal migrants from Burma, most of
them women, suffocated in the back of an unventilated truck in
southern Thailand while being smuggled toward the resort island of
Phuket, police said Thursday.
The victims, along with 47 survivors, had entered Thailand to seek
jobs in the booming tourist center. They had been forced to stand in
the locked and sweltering cargo area of the truck, normally used to
carry seafood, police and survivors said.
The migrants had been on the road in Ranong province near Burma for
about two hours late Wednesday when they started collapsing, survivors
said. Temperatures in the province reached 93 degrees Wednesday.
"I thought everyone was going to die," Saw Win, a 30-year-old
survivor, told the Associated Press while in police custody. "If the
truck had driven for 30 minutes more, I would have died for sure."
He said that about 30 minutes into the trip the occupants pounded on
the inside of the truck, screamed for air and used a mobile phone to
call the driver, who turned on air conditioning.
The air conditioning later shut down, and after 30 minutes the
occupants called the driver again, but his phone was off. They
continued pounding and screaming until the driver stopped the truck
about an hour later, unlocked the door and ran off when he saw the
state of the victims, Saw Win said.
A translator for police gave a slightly different account of the
incident based on his conversations with survivors.
He said the air conditioning had broken down while the truck was
waiting for a police checkpoint to close for the night. The
translator, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to
speak to the media, said the driver ran away without unlocking the
door.
It was only when nearby villagers heard screams and banging from the
vehicle that they came to investigate and opened the doors, he said.
"When police got to the scene, they found that 54 of the workers were
already dead in the packed container truck," said Col. Kraithong
Chanthongbai, police chief for Ranong's Suksamran district. Thirty-
seven of the dead were women and 17 were men.
Kraithong said 21 of the survivors were hospitalized and the rest were
held for questioning.
About a million people from desperately poor Burma are registered to
work in Thailand, while an additional million are estimated to be
working here illegally. Large numbers of illegal migrants also come
from Thailand's other poor neighbors, Cambodia and Laos.
http://www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041000631.html
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