Agency: 4,000 fishermen stranded on some Indonesian islands

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Agency: 4,000 fishermen stranded on some Indonesian islands
By MARGIE MASON, Associated Press | March 27, 2015 | Updated: March 27, 2015 4:43am

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An estimated 4,000 foreign fishermen are stranded on a number of remote islands in eastern Indonesia, including men revealed in an Associated Press investigation to have been enslaved, an aid group said.

Many of the migrant workers were abandoned by their boat captains following a government moratorium on foreign fishing that has docked vessels to crack down on illegal operators, said Steve Hamilton, deputy chief of mission at the International Organization for Migration in Indonesia.

"It is reasonable to expect many are victims of trafficking, if not outright slavery," he said, adding the group has been working for years with Indonesian authorities to repatriate trafficked fishermen.

~ snip ~

They described horrendous working conditions while at sea, saying they were forced to drink unclean water and work 20- to 22-hour shifts with no days off. Almost all said they were kicked, whipped with toxic stingray tails or otherwise beaten if they complained or tried to rest. They were paid little or nothing..


Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Agency-4-000-fishermen-stranded-on-some-6162341.php

[Tanuki]

1. Important story, and horrifying to think we may be eating fish caught by enslaved laborers.

"The yearlong AP investigation used satellites to track seafood caught by the slaves from a large refrigerated cargo ship in Benjina to Thailand, where reporters watched it being unloaded onto dozens of trucks over four nights. The lorries were then followed to a number of processing plants, cold storage operations and the country's largest fish market. From there, U.S. Customs records were used to link the fish to the supply chains of some of America's largest supermarkets and retailers."

[Scuba]

3. It isn't just fish ...

http://otherwords.org/big_chocolates_child_slavery_addiction/

Sorry to scare you, but on Halloween much of the chocolate Americans will hand out to trick-or-treaters will be tainted by the labor of enslaved children.

Hershey’s, Nestlé, and the other big chocolate companies know this. They promised nearly a decade ago to set up a system to certify that no producers in their supply chains use child labor. They gave themselves a July 2005 deadline for that, which came and went without meaningful action. A second voluntary deadline sailed by as well in 2008. There’s a new deadline for voluntary action at the end of this year. Don’t hold your breath.

Few Americans had heard of this problem before reporters Sudarsan Raghavan and Sumana Chatterjee exposed the scandalous conditions under which most U.S. chocolate is made, in the summer of 2001.

In one of their articles, a slave described his 13-hour workdays on the 494-acre plantation as brutal, filled with harsh physical labor, punctuated by beatings, and ending with a night of fitful sleep on a wooden plank in a locked room with other slaves.

[DeSwiss]

2. K&R

- Just when you thought this couldn't possibly be made more unpalatable.....

[Scuba]

4. The Republican model for business.

[Enthusiast]

11. Precisely.

[L0oniX]

5. Wall Street banksters dream.

[Enthusiast]

9. +1

[november3rd]

6. Let's hear it for

DEREGULATION!!!

Another shining example of trickle-down economics.

[riversedge]

7. Spot on!!

[Enthusiast]

10. +1

[Enthusiast]

8. +1

[Enthusiast]

12. K&R! This post should have hundreds of recommendations!

[Thor_MN]

13. Sounds like the boat captains need to be lobbying for H1-B visas.