Labor abuses on foreign-flagged fishing vessels in Indonesia’s remote eastern seas continue to claim lives, with Indonesian crew members bearing the brunt of exploitation amid weak law enforcement, a new report published on Oct. 3 shows. “What we ate and drank was unfit,” Sanusi, a crew member aboard the Russia-flagged Run Zeng 03 fishing boat, told Indonesian publications Jaring and Tempo. Sanusi said he was given rotten chicken to eat and drank used water from an air-conditioning condenser. Crew members felt so desperate after working up to 18 hours a day and enduring a protracted dispute over withheld pay that they leapt in April from the boat into the Arafura Sea, some 8 kilometers (5 miles) from shore. Most of the crew were rescued by a passing purse seine fishing boat and admitted to the nearest health center for critical care. However, the headless body of one of the men, named Juanaaby, was recovered days later and buried by residents of Warabal village, Tual district. Awareness of criminality at sea has increased a decade after Associated Press journalists won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for documenting systemic forced labor in Southeast Asia’s fishing fleets. That disclosure led to the release of more than 2,000 people, some of whom had been kept in cages. However, reporting in the past several years has revealed widespread abuses have persisted in the sector, perhaps most notoriously on vessels operated by Dalian Ocean Fishing, a China-based tuna firm that supplied sashimi-grade fish to Japan.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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