Human Cargo

--Human smuggling is now said to have an annual turnover of over $7 billion - more than revenue from smuggling drugs. Caroline Moorehead's important new book looks at 'human cargo' from Afghanistan, Liberia, Palestine and many other places. -- She has visited war zones, camps, prisons - and the black Dinka families from the Sudan who were re-settled north of the Arctic Circle in Finland. She follows the fate of 57 young member of the Mandingo tribe, who fled ethnic cleansing and ended up happily in America via Egypt. She is shown the graves in Sicily of drowned boat people, and examines the fence that has been built across Texas and into the sea to keep migrants out of America. She has interviewed emigration officials in Australia and members of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Geneva. --Is there a valid distinction between 'good' asylum seekers and 'bad' economic migrants? What happens to those whose applications are turned down? The difficult questions are asked, the horrible issues faced. But, above all, Human Cargo celebrates the courage, cheerfulness and will to survive of ordinary human beings.

About the Author :
Caroline Moorehead wrote a column on human rights first for The Times and then for the Independent (1980-91) and made a series of TV programmes on human rights for the BBC (1990-2000). She has written the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross (1998); and has helped to set up a Legal Advice Centre for refugees in Cairo, where she has also started schools and a nursery. Currently she works as a volunteer on the legal team for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, while also continuing to review and write on human rights in many different papers. Her latest book, a biography of Martha Gellhorn, is available in Vintage.

Review :
'An epic account of human traffic throughout the last century and the courage, inhumanity and tragedy that inevitably accompany it... This is the story of how it actually feels to be living, breathing human cargo... wisely, coolly and unsentimentally, Moorehead allows the migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to speak for themselves... a remarkable book... A shattering book, meticulously researched, humane and, in places, utterly heartbreaking.', Lisa O'Kelly, Observer .'Moorehead, seems to have inherited Gellhorn's clear-sighted passion for exposing the imhumanity with which we treat other human beings, and the same determination to deliver a truthful record of events, which most of us are unwilling or afraid to confront.', Mike Phillips, Guardian