Death on the high seas: Taiwanese rights groups demand end to modern slavery on fishing boats – Telegraph.co.uk

The agency added it was working to enforce its clear policy against recruitment fees, the withholding of wages, and excess working hours, which should guarantee 10 hours rest a day and four days holiday every month.

There would be zero tolerance of physical or verbal abuse and mechanisms were in place to report violations. Harbour inspections to monitor conditions for foreign crews had also been introduced in 2018.

On the US crackdown, the agency said it was willing to listen to suggestions from all walks of life with humility and discuss ways to improve.

But while efforts were being made to close the regulatory gap between domestic and foreign workers, it insisted that most fishing boat owners were willing to treat foreign crews kindly.

NGOs had generally presented a one-sided, subjective picture that unfairly tainted the industry and did not always take into account the views of the vessel owners, it claimed.

Pressure for action continues to mount.

In recent years, the Taiwanese government has instituted legal and regulatory changes. However, NGOs find these changes to be insufficient and they continue reporting serious abuses, said a report by the Global Labour Justice-International Labour Rights Forum in December.

To end forced labour in distant water fisheries, the government must abolish the discriminatory employment scheme and ensure all migrant fishers are afforded the same labour rights and protections as Taiwanese fishers, said Kimberly Rogovin, the group'ssenior seafood campaign coordinator.

I do hope the fishing industry in Taiwan can learn to adjust to international and local regulation against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the violation of human rights, added Lennon Ying-Dah Wong, a workers rights activist.

What we want is merely to stop this kind of scandal and abuse, not to destroy the industryIf the industry doesn't change, they might face more international sanctions.

Hariyanto, the head of the Indonesia Migrant Workers Union, said he had heard of 21 cases,including five from Taiwan, of modern slavery on fishing boats from 2019-2020. The case where Arif had died was one of the worst cases we found, he claimed.

But perhaps nobody wants to see reform more than fishermen like Jack and Stanley.

Stanley was left in debt to the broker who found him the job, and still hasa scar on his leg where he was struck with a fishing spear.

Jack remains in hiding in Taiwan, where he has found construction work, but is haunted by his experience at sea.

I just want to be heard..to tell the whole truth about what happened in our fishing boat, he said. I want to get justice for what happened to all of us.

Additional reporting: Dan Olanday in Manila

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Death on the high seas: Taiwanese rights groups demand end to modern slavery on fishing boats - Telegraph.co.uk