A Vietnamese migrant's nightmare in UK cannabis farm

Locked up day and night, alone and suffocating from the fumes in a British cannabis factory, Vietnamese migrant Xuan was threatened with death by his traffickers if the harvest was poor.

The number of Vietnamese crossing the Channel on small boats jumped in 2024, according to figures from the UK interior ministry.

They are also among the most exposed to modern slavery, with more than 1,000 presumed victims reported to the British authorities in 2023.

For James Fookes, of non-governmental organisation Anti-Slavery International, those figures represent "the tip of the iceberg".

The human trafficking network between Vietnam and the UK is so "well established" that he compares it "to international trade routes".

Like Xuan, many Vietnamese migrants caught up in trafficking end up on UK cannabis farms after getting into debt at home.

Xuan, using an assumed name out of fear for his safety, said he ended up owing money to "gangsters" when his real estate investments failed, and he was unable to pay what he owed.

They offered the father of two boys a choice: sell his organs or go to work in the UK.

In 2015, Xuan flew to Russia, then to the Netherlands before catching a train to France.

He then crossed the Channel hidden in a truck, with around 10 other mostly Vietnamese people.

The police found them and Xuan was placed in an asylum centre, before moving in with a nephew in London.

It was a short-lived reprieve. In the spring of 2016, as he was leaving the police station where he was supposed to sign in, two strangers bundled him into a car.

They handed him a mobile phone, on the other end of which was a Vietnamese man who told Xuan to "follow these two men otherwise they would shoot me dead," he recalled.

'Beaten a lot'

They drove for hours to the north of England. "I was terrified," said Xuan.

He worked in a warehouse for several months, loading and unloading boxes containing mysterious goods, alongside other men, with whom he was not allowed to communicate.

Unsurprisingly, he was not paid.

"They beat me a lot," said a tearful Xuan, 58. "I was just trying to keep myself healthy and alive in the hope that one day I can see my children again."

Finally, he was taken to the cannabis farm: an ordinary three-storey house, with plants everywhere except in the toilets and the kitchen.

"I stayed there all by myself. The persons that brought me there checked on me almost every day. The house was locked," said Xuan, who slept on a mattress on the kitchen floor.

He was put to work watering and fertilising the cannabis, making sure the plants were growing well under the lamps and in a humid heat of 36 degrees.

He fell ill in 2021 during the pandemic, and the plants turned yellow due to neglect.

"I could not breathe, I could not work, I could not take care of the plants. I was afraid they would beat me to death as I did not fulfil my job," said Xuan.

So one night, he escaped by breaking a window and fled to a train station, getting a ticket to London.

He collapsed in the street as he arrived in the capital.

Nearly 37,000 migrants arrived illegally in the UK last year by crossing the Channel.

Xuan now lives in a safe house in the suburbs of London, at an undisclosed address.

He still has trouble sleeping when the memories come back. His dream is to stay in the UK and for his children to join him.

But his asylum application was rejected last year and he is now awaiting the appeal decision.