Triple Tunnel Trial

If at first you don't succeed, dig, dig again.

Or dig three times, if that's your thing.

Shenzhen customs bagged two Hong Kong residents and five mainlanders who'd dug not one but three smuggling tunnels between Shenzhen and Hong Kong.

View large image The first tunnel measured 20 meters long by just 55 centimetres in diameter, and was one metre below the surface, linking sewer systems in both cities. It took about 20 days to dig and was used three times to move computer chips and mobile phones.

That's a lot of work to only smuggle electronics; they could have made a lot more money as snakeheads by funneling illegal immigrants into Hong Kong. Humans don't need to be bagged or stored, all they require is a bar of soap to wash off the stink.

After the bust, the smugglers gave up the location of a second, 40-metre-long tunnel originating under an auto-repair shop. They only used it twice because the odor from a nearby sewer was overpowering.

Pansies. In the old days smugglers had to crawl through one-kilometre-long sewer pipes uphill both ways just to avoid paying duties.

A further search found two perps trying to cave in a third tunnel near a primary school. What were they planning to smuggle, 1st-graders?

Seeing as it took three years for the second tunneling operation to commence, can we expect a bigger and better underground undertaking in 2009?

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