Missionary priest visits Britain in bid to prevent young people becoming drug mules

An Australian religious and his colleague have visited London and surrounding areas in an attempt to raise awareness of the growing number of young British adults being imprisoned abroad after being coerced into becoming drug mules.

Fr John Wotherspoon, of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and a long-time prison chaplain, believes gangs in some northern cities could be behind the sudden number of young people from UK being used to take drugs from Frankfurt and Amsterdam to places such Hong Kong.

He and his colleague, Jane Chow, chief operations officer of Voice for Prisoners, visited the UK in an attempt to connect with communities able to help prevent vulnerable people being lured in.

“I worked in Australia for 12 years in ministry, schools, and parishes, and for the last 41 years, I’ve been based in Hong Kong, including seven years in China, teaching English, and the last 25 years, been doing prison ministry, prison visitation, and about 10 years ago, I realised that the best way to help prisoners was to stop them going to prison, and to help start a campaign, to warn people in other countries, not to take drugs to Hong Kong,” he told The Tablet.

He has been to many Africa, Latin America and south-east Asia many times but this was his first time in Europe. “In the past there were isolated cases of people from Europe, taking drugs to Hong Kong. But in the last year or so, there has been a big spike in the number of people arrested Hong Kong airport with drugs from, especially Frankfurt and Amsterdam, and also Brussels airports. Many of those people are from Britain. And many of them are very young people. No drugs have come from the UK, but people have.”

“But it’s quite interesting and very sad, the number of young Britons in the last year or two. It’s not just Hong Kong. They’re going Thailand, parts of Africa, Latin America, and big spike in the number of, especially young people from the UK, and this is what we want to try to stop.”

He said he knows of eight or nine young people from the UK currently in prison in Hong Kong. Many of those get persuaded to take a suitcase from an airport on the European mainland for a fee and a free trip with all expenses paid.

“The problem is they don’t realise the enormous risks of their being caught,” said Fr Wotherspoon. “They think they might just get a slap on the wrist, like, might happen in Europe. If they plead guilty, they get a one third reduction, and then another one third for good behaviour, which would bring down an initial starting point of 27 or 30 years down to about eight or nine years.

“It’s a long sentence. Harsh by European standards, but compared with China, Indonesia, Singapore, which have the death penalty, it’s not bad.”

He said that in different parts of the world, they have tried different strategies, such as asking that airport security be improved, and that has happened and has helped lead to a reduction in number of drug mules.

“But here in Britain, it’s not a matter of airport security. It is not a matter of drunks going out. It’s a matter of people, especially young people.

“So we’re thinking, obviously, the need is for publicity to warn young people, and maybe the best way to do it is to engage other young people, to warn young people, because other young people, like a small army of university students, or workers, and they can find out where are the platforms, social media, which are influencing these vulnerable people, and try to put up messages to warn them.”

For more information see Voice for Prisoners, of which Fr Wotherspoon is now chief executive.

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