January 7, 2020 — D, 28-year-old Indonesian man, was witness to a deadly assault on a fellow boat crew member by the captain when they worked aboard the Taiwanese fishing vessel Da Wang a few years ago. The captain hit his friend in the head, then forced them to continue working.
“In the morning when we woke up for breakfast, we found him dead in his room. The captain wrapped up my dead friend’s body with a blanket and then stored him in the freezer,” D said in an interview in July 2019.
D is one of 34 Indonesian sailors featured in an investigative report by the environmental group Greenpeace and the Indonesian Migrant Workers’ Union (SBMI) published on Dec. 9. The organizations looked into their complaints of forced labor during their employment on 13 fishing vessels registered in China, Taiwan, Fiji and Vanuatu.
The crews’ statements described conditions in which they experienced overwork, withholding of wages, debt bondage, and physical and sexual violence. These conditions eventually forced them to cut short their working contracts, which typically run about two years, and forfeit the deposits they were typically required to pay to get the jobs.