Hong Kong police round up illegal immigrants and their snakeheads hiding in Shek O hills
Migrants all from Vietnam and include seven men and five women between the ages of 17 and 55
Police arrested 12 illegal immigrants and four human traffickers in a big operation on Friday, including eight people who had been hiding in the hills around Shek O.
The migrants – seven men and five women between the ages of 17 and 55 – were all from Vietnam. The traffickers, or so-called snakeheads, were members of a gang dedicated to smuggling Vietnamese people from mainland China to Hong Kong.
Officers from the Organised Crime and Triad Bureau arrested the people in the hills, near Cape D’Aguilar Road, early in the morning during a joint operation with their counterparts in Guangdong province.
“We knew some of the illegal immigrants were hiding in the mountains around Cape D’Aguilar and Shek O,” bureau superintendent Kwan King-pan said, adding that officers from the Police Tactical Unit were assisted by a helicopter from the Government Flying Services.
The other six arrests, including two snakeheads, were made near the Shau Kei Wan MTR station.
The two snakeheads arrested in Shau Kei Wan were a 46-year-old mainland Chinese man who holds a two-way permit, and a 38-year-old woman, believed to be a Vietnamese national but holding a Hong Kong ID card.