On 23rd October 2019, 39 Vietnamese people were found dead in the back of a lorry in Essex. Politicians including Home Secretary Priti Patel, quickly labelled this as an incidence of human trafficking.
But as the Old Bailey trial of those charged in this case opens, not one of them has been charged with human trafficking.
In this video, Emily Kenway, author of The Truth About Modern Slavery, argues that the use of the term ‘human trafficking’ is politically motivated – intended to distract us from the real issue: our anti-migrant border policies.