Workers are promised good wages but many are at sea for months or years working long hours, earning 15 New Zealand cents an hour. Continue reading

She looked after the needs of the detainees and served as their interpreter and mediator in court, said the secretary for communications and youth at Don Bosco Technical School at Gabutu, in Port Moresby, Fr Ambrose Pereira.

They have been detained in the prisons of Alotau, Giligili and Bomana for illegally fishing and harvesting beche-de-mer in Milne Bay.

Trinh communicates with their families back home and arranges for payment of their penalties and getting all the necessary documents and tickets for them to fly back home to Vietnam.

"Sr Trinh successfully processed the repatriation of 87 Vietnamese fishermen and about 18 more will soon follow and all will soon be able to re-join their families back home, thanks to the courage of this sister and the support given by her Salesian community," said Fr Ambrose.

Trinh is a Vietnamese Salesian Sister working in a girls' skills training institute in Sideia Island, diocese of Alotau in Milne Bay.

Another priest, Fr Rolando Santos said the case of the Vietnamese fishermen was disturbing.

"They (Vietnamese fishermen) are used by whoever employs them to fish illegally without a proper license or any guarantee of protection or security from their employers.

"It is a serious abuse on the rights and dignity of these young men to be sent out by their recruiters to fish in illegal waters without a proper licence and without any guarantee of protection or security."

"Once caught, they are almost totally forgotten and abandoned."

The Governor of Milne Bay, Titus Philemon has expressed his deep gratitude to Sr Trinh for the help that she has given the Vietnamese detainees.

Source

• thenational.com.pg
• Image: asianews.it

This legislation is the first of its kind in the world.

It makes New Zealand a world leader in addressing this global problem said the national director of the Apostolate of the Sea (AoS) in New Zealand, Father Jeff Drane.

He says Fr Bruno Ciceri, a representative of the Apostleship of the Sea International at the Holy See's Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, and the work of AoS, has helped to convince the New Zealand Government of the need for such legislation.

Ciceri has written a book, with Alistair Couper and Hance Smith, Fishers and Plunderers: Theft, Slavery and Violence at Sea.

The situation globally

"Because AoS is a widespread global apostolate we have to address the serious issues of fisheries globally," Drane said:

• Fishermen are underpaid and exploited
• They are subject to physical and sexual abuse
• They work onboard rusty and unsafe fishing vessels
• Fishing vessels fly under flags of convenience
• With no adherence to the law of that country, these fishing vessels exploit the fish stocks
• The indiscriminate taking of fish stocks amounts to theft from properly registered and controlled fishing businesses and, more importantly, theft of fish resources from indigenous peoples.

The AoS and the Catholic Church globally are active in addressing these issues.

In June AoS South Asia is organising a global Fisheries conference in Bangkok and another next year in Taiwan.

AoSNZ delegates will be attending both conferences with a view to actions we are able to take.

The situation in New Zealand

In New Zealand reports of crews being beaten and forced to work for minimal pay, and for days without rest, have not been uncommon in recent years.

A New Zealand joint ministerial inquiry in 2012 found Korean fishing charters were damaging New Zealand's international reputation.

In August 2010, the 38-year-old Korean fishing boat Oyang 70 sank in calm conditions off the coast of Otago. Six men died.

The captain had refused to cut loose an enormous 120-tonne catch, causing the ship to roll and sink as the haul was brought in.

In 2011, all 32 Indonesian crew on the Korean Oyang 75 walked off the ship alleging sexual and physical abuse.

The ship would later face 26 charges of dumping fish.

Its sister ship, the Oyang 77, had eight charges of illegally dumping fish overboard laid against it.

Both were owned by Korea's largest fishing company, Sajo Oyang.

Nine vessels so far had been reflagged, three were in the process of reflagging and could not fish in New Zealand waters until they had.

About nine had decided not to fish in New Zealand waters, Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy said.

Source

• www.stuff.co.nz
• Supplied
• Image: stuff.co.nz

Like the hundreds of thousands of his fellow Cambodians who migrate in search of work each year, he had a simple but powerful motivation: "I heard there were better jobs in Thailand and I knew bahts were worth more than riels, so I decided to go."

It was a decision that nearly cost him his life. After chatting with others in his village who had made the journey before him, San waited at the border for two days. When night fell on the second day, he crossed the border into Thailand and then waited another day on the other side. Eventually, a group of men appeared in a large pick-up.

"They used their mobile phones as torches to see which of us looked strong, then they laid us next to each other and on top of each other in the back of the pick-up," says San.

"There were three layers of us, with the strongest at the bottom. There were about 20 of us in the back and they put a plastic sheet over us and told us not to make any noise."

Eight suffocating hours later, the pick-up stopped in a forest and San and five other Cambodians were herded into a cage and "locked in so that the police wouldn't find us". Behind bars in an unknown forest in a strange land, the negotiations began. San and the others were offered $200 (£132) a month - far more than they would make at home - to work on construction sites in Bangkok.

They accepted, only to discover that they would have to pay their captors-cum-employers $80 for transporting them to the Thai capital, $80 for the correct documents, and $30 a month for basics such as mosquito nets. Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian. The article is by Sam Jones, a Guardian reporter currently on a secondment on Global development.
• Image: YouTube

Seven months later, his body was sent home in a wooden coffin: jet black from having been kept in a fish freezer aboard a ship for more than a month, missing an eye and his pancreas, and covered in cuts and bruises, which an autopsy report later concluded had been inflicted before death.

"Sick and resting," said a note taped to his body. Handwritten in Chinese by the ship's captain, it stated only that Mr. Andrade, 31, had fallen ill in his sleep.

Mr. Andrade, who died in February 2011, and nearly a dozen other men in his village had been recruited by an illegal "manning agency," tricked with false promises of double the actual wages and then sent to an apartment in Singapore, where they were locked up for weeks, according to interviews and affidavits taken by local prosecutors.

While they waited to be deployed to Taiwanese tuna ships, several said, a gatekeeper demanded sex from them for assignments at sea.

Once aboard, the men endured 20-hour workdays and brutal beatings, only to return home unpaid and deeply in debt from thousands of dollars in upfront costs, prosecutors say.

Thousands of maritime employment agencies around the world provide a vital service, supplying crew members for ships, from small trawlers to giant container carriers, and handling everything from paychecks to plane tickets.

While many companies operate responsibly, over all the industry, which has drawn little attention, is poorly regulated.

The few rules on the books do not even apply to fishing ships, where the worst abuses tend to happen, and enforcement is lax.

Illegal agencies operate with even greater impunity, sending men to ships notorious for poor safety and labor records; instructing them to travel on tourist or transit visas, which exempt them from the protections of many labor and anti-trafficking laws; and disavowing them if they are denied pay, injured, killed, abandoned or arrested at sea. Continue reading

Sources

• The New York Times, from an article by New York Times reporter Ian Urbina.
• Image: Nick Grono