When 20 Indonesian fishermen boarded the Chinese vessel Long Xing 629 in February last year, they had no idea what kind of high seas hell awaited them.
The seamen, aged between 20 and 35, said they were sometimes forced to work for up to two days without rest, subjected to violence and discrimination, and faced hunger and dehydration.
Within 13 months, four of them were dead. Three of the bodies had been dumped overboard before the rest of the crew finally disembarked in South Korea last month. Those that survived returned to Indonesia last Friday, where they are still waiting for thousands of dollars in unpaid wages.
The case rocketed into the spotlight in Indonesia last week after video footage emerged of what appeared to be a burial at sea, prompting Jakarta to summon China’s ambassador for an explanation and condemn the men’s treatment by the company as inhuman.
The Indonesian National Police’s criminal investigation unit has since launched an official probe which Beijing says it is cooperating with.
China’s foreign ministry said on Monday it was investigating the case, but added some of the allegations were inconsistent with information it had gathered, though it did not elaborate.
Though the exact causes of the deaths remain unclear, testimony given by the fishermen to lawyers and advocates for the group in South Korea and Indonesia, as well as information gathered by the US-based Centre For Advanced Defence Studies (C4ADS), reveal the men toiled away in gruelling conditions before they died.
Besides being hit and verbally abused by the Chinese crew, the Indonesians said they regularly worked up to 21-hour days manning the boat’s longlines or sorting catch.
They recalled meagre and unhygienically cooked meals of rice and bait fish, and said they were forced to drink salty, distilled seawater for the duration of the trip while the Chinese crew were given bottled water.
Three crew members died on the vessels. One died after he arrived in Korea, during the 14-day quarantine, said Jong-chul Kim, a South Korean lawyer with Advocates for Public Interest Law (Apil), which interviewed the men about their ordeal while they were in Covid-19 quarantine in Busan before they returned home to Indonesia.
The symptoms were pretty much the same: swelling of the body, chest pain, breathing problems. The crew member who died first started showing symptoms about one and a half months before he died, but the captain did not transfer him to a hospital, said Kim.
The Long Xing 629 was also allegedly involved in shark finning, where fins are sliced off sharks and their carcasses are tossed back into the ocean. Photos from the crew provided to the South China Morning Post by Apil show what appear to be piles of bloody fins strewn across the boat’s deck.
Tens of thousands of migrant workers from Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia are recruited through manning agencies to work on Chinese, Taiwanese, Thai and South Korean fishing vessels each year, where anti-trafficking advocates say they run the risk of exploitation due to the lack of monitoring on the high seas.
As catches have become harder and more expensive due to overfishing, the seafood industry has increasingly employed vulnerable migrant labourers to remain profitable.
Activists say there is a direct link between declining stocks, rights abuses, and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing otherwise known as IUU.
IUU, such as shark finning and human rights abuses, continues to haunt the global distant water fishing fleet, said Arifsyah M. Nasution, Oceans Campaign Lead at Greenpeace Southeast Asia. This seafood tainted with IUU and forced labour can then be served to consumers through the very complex and non-transparent seafood supply chain.
The men on the Long Xing 629 were recruited by four Indonesian agencies: PT Lakemba Perkasa Bahari, PT Alfira Perdana Jaya, PT Sinar Muara Gemilang and PT Karunia Bahari Samudera.
According to advocates and contracts reviewed by the Post, most were from poor families and were promised salaries of between US$300 and US$450 a month as part of a two-year binding commitment. But each contract contained deductions for fees and security deposits worth hundreds of dollars.
The cost of repatriation was to be borne by workers if they could not complete the term of employment and at least one agreement contained a clause allowing the recruitment agency to sue an individual’s family for losses.
South China Morning Post