A video showing the body of a young man being callously thrown into the sea has sparked an international investigation, and shone a spotlight on the “slave-like” conditions allegedly suffered by Indonesian fishermen on board Chinese-owned vessels. This is the story of just two families, mourning sons and brothers who died trying to build a new life.
Sepri had never been to sea before, when he heard through a friend about the chance to work on a Chinese-owned fishing boat.
The promised money on offer was beyond anything the 25-year-old could dream of earning in his village on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
“He was so enthusiastic about suddenly being able to earn such big money for us,” his sister Rika Andri Pratama remembers.
With the assurance of training and a $400 (£326) a month salary, he set sail with a group of 22 Indonesian men on the Long Xing 629 fishing vessel in February last year.
“Before he left, he borrowed some money from me,” says Rika.
“He said it would be the last time because he would come home with loads more and we could finally afford to renovate the family home.”
But Sepri never came home. No money was sent. And Rika didn’t speak to her brother again.
In early January, she received a letter. He had died at sea, his body thrown overboard into the Pacific Ocean.
“My heart was crushed when I heard he was thrown into the sea,” she says holding back tears.
She was filled with guilt. “Before our mum died, her last words were, ‘you should take care of your little brother’.”
Two other Indonesian crew members died on the Long Xing 629. Sepri and another man died within days of each other in December, after just 10 months at sea. While Ari, who was from the same village as Sepri, died in March this year, shortly before the rest of the crew were rescued.
Like Sepri, their bodies were wrapped in cloth and thrown over the side. Like Sepri’s, their families would never get the chance to say goodbye either.
A third desperately ill man, Efendi Pasaribu, would make it to shore alive – but only just.
There was a chance this could have all gone unnoticed – simply a few more deaths at sea – had the unceremonious sea burial captured on a mobile not come to light, and caused a public outcry in Indonesia.
Instead, the video sparked a renewed debate about the abuse of fishermen aboard foreign vessels in Southeast Asia.
Shockingly, the stories of life aboard the Long Xing 629 are eerily familiar, and come just five years after about 4,000 foreign fishermen, mostly from Myanmar (Burma), were rescued and freed from remote islands in Indonesia; some had been exploited in slave-like conditions for years.
At the time Indonesia vowed to fight to end unregulated fishing and the exploitation of fishermen on foreign vessels.
As the Long Xing 629’s survivors began to talk, it became clear little had changed.
Fellow crew mates, who requested only to be identified by their initials, said they were often beaten and kicked. They couldn’t understand what their Chinese bosses were saying and it led to confusion and frustration.
One of the crew told BBC Indonesia his friends’ bodies all swelled up before they died.
Another said they were forced to work 18-hour days and only given fish bait to eat.
“They [the Chinese crew] drank mineral water, while we were only given poorly distilled sea water,” 20-year-old NA said.
Migrant rights groups are calling on the government to do much more to protect their citizens from becoming “slaves”.
The Indonesian government says the Long Xing 269 survivors – none of whom received their full salaries – were part of a group of 49 fishermen, ranging from 19 to 24, who had been forced to work in poor conditions on at least four fishing boats owned by the same Chinese company, Dalian Ocean fishing Co Ltd.
It declined to respond to the allegations when contacted by the BBC, saying it would issue a statement on its website. No response has been released.
2020 BBC