THE
Burmese slaves sat on the floor and stared through the rusty bars of their
locked cage, hidden on a tiny tropical island thousands of miles from home. Just a few yards away, other workers loaded cargo ships
with slave-caught seafood that clouds the supply networks of major
supermarkets, restaurants and even pet stores in the United States.
But the eight imprisoned men were considered flight risks
— labourers who might dare run away. They lived on a few bites of rice and
curry a day in a space barely big enough to lie down, stuck until the next
trawler forces them back to sea.
“All I did was tell my
captain I couldn’t take it anymore, that I wanted to go home,” said Kyaw Naing,
his dark eyes pleading into an Associated Press video camera sneaked in by a
sympathetic worker. “The next time we docked,” he said nervously out of earshot
of a nearby guard, “I was locked up.”
Here, in the Indonesian
island village of Benjina and the surrounding waters, hundreds of trapped men
represent one of the most desperate links crisscrossing between companies and
countries in the seafood industry. This intricate web of connections separates
the fish we eat from the men who catch it, and obscures a brutal truth: Your
seafood may come from slaves.
The men the AP interviewed
on Benjina were mostly from Myanmar, also known as Burma, one of the poorest
countries in the world. They were brought to Indonesia through Thailand and
forced to fish. Their catch was then shipped back to Thailand, where it entered
the global stream of commerce.
 |
| Seafood caught by Burmese slaves heading to US. |
Tainted fish can wind up
in the supply chains of some of America’s major grocery stores, such as Kroger,
Albertsons and Safeway; the nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart; and the
biggest food distributor, Sysco. It can find its way into the supply chains of
some of the most popular brands of canned pet food, including Fancy Feast, Meow
Mix and Iams. It can turn up as calamari at fine dining restaurants, as
imitation crab in a California sushi roll or as packages of frozen snapper
relabeled with store brands that land on our dinner tables.
In a year-long
investigation, the AP talked to more than 40 current and former slaves in Benjina.
The Gap documented the journey of a single large shipment of slave-caught
seafood from the Indonesian village, tracking it by satellite to a gritty Thai
harbour. Upon its arrival, AP journalists followed trucks that loaded and drove
the seafood over four nights to dozens of factories, cold storage plants and
the country’s biggest fish market.
The tainted seafood mixes
in with other fish at a number of sites in Thailand, including processing
plants. US Customs records show that several of those Thai factories ship to
America. They also sell to Europe and Asia, but the AP traced shipments to the
US, where trade records are public.
By this time, it is nearly
impossible to tell where a specific fish caught by a slave ends up. However,
entire supply chains are muddied, and money is trickling down the line to
companies that benefit from slave labour.
The major corporations
contacted would not speak on the record but issued statements that strongly
condemned labour abuses. All said they were taking steps to prevent forced
labour, such as working with human rights groups to hold subcontractors
accountable.
Several independent
seafood distributors who did comment described the costly and exhaustive steps
taken to ensure their supplies are clean. They said the discovery of slaves
underscores how hard it is to monitor what goes on halfway around the world.
Santa Monica Seafood, a
large independent importer that sells to restaurants, markets and direct from
its store, has been a leader in improving international fisheries, and sends
buyers around the world to inspect vendors.
“The supply chain is quite
cloudy, especially when it comes from offshore,” said Logan Kock, vice
president for responsible sourcing, who acknowledged that the industry
recognises and is working to address the problem. “Is it possible a little of
this stuff is leaking through? Yeah, it is possible. We are all aware of it.”
The slaves interviewed by the AP had no idea where the
fish they caught was headed. They knew only that it was so valuable, they were
not allowed to eat it. They said the captains on their fishing boats forced
them 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, as they hauled in heavy nets with squid, shrimp, snapper, grouper and
other fish.
Some shouted for help over
the deck of their trawler in the port to reporters, as bright fluorescent
lights silhouetted their faces in the darkness. “I want to go home. We all do,”
one man called out in Burmese, a cry repeated by others. The Gap is not using
the names of some men for their safety. “Our parents haven’t heard from us for
a long time. I’m sure they think we are dead.”
Another glanced fearfully
over his shoulder toward the captain’s quarters, and then yelled: “It’s
torture. When we get beaten, we can’t do anything back. ... I think our lives
are in the hands of the Lord of Death.” In the worst cases, numerous men
reported maimings or even deaths on their boats.
“If Americans and
Europeans are eating this fish, they should remember us,” said Hlaing Min, 30,
a runaway slave from Benjina. “There must be a mountain of bones under the sea.
... The bones of the people could be an island, it’s that many.”
IN FEAR OF THE SLAVE CATCHERS
For Burmese slaves,
Benjina is the end of the world. Roughly 3,500 people live in the town that
straddles two small islands separated by a five-minute boat ride. Part of the
Maluku chain, formerly known as the Spice Islands, the area is about 400 miles
north of Australia, and hosts small kangaroos and rare birds of paradise with
dazzling bright feathers.
Benjina is impossible to
reach by boat for several months of the year, when monsoon rains churn the
Arafura Sea. It is further cut off by a lack of internet access. Before a cell
tower was finally installed last month, villagers would climb nearby hills each
evening in the hope of finding a signal strong enough to send a text. An old
landing strip has not been used in years.
The small harbour is occupied by Pusaka Benjina
Resources, whose five-story office compound stands out and includes the cage
with the slaves. The company is the only fishing operation on Benjina
officially registered in Indonesia, and is listed as the owner of more than 90
trawlers. However, the captains are Thai, and the Indonesian government is
reviewing to see if the boats are really Thai-owned. Pusaka Benjina did not
respond to phone calls and a letter, and did not speak to a reporter who waited
for two hours in the company’s Jakarta office.
On the dock in Benjina,
former slaves unload boats for food and pocket money. Many are men who were
abandoned by their captains — sometimes five, 10 or even 20 years ago — and
remain stranded.
 |
| Runaway Burmese slaves. |
In the deeply forested
island interiors, new runaways forage for food and collect rainwater, living in
constant fear of being found by hired slave catchers. And just off a beach
covered in sharp coral, a graveyard swallowed by the jungle entombs dozens of
fishermen. They are buried under fake Thai names given to them when they were
tricked or sold onto their ships, forever covering up evidence of their
captors’ abuse, their friends say.
“I always thought if there
was an entrance there had to be an exit,” said Tun Lin Maung, a slave abandoned
on Benjina, as other men nodded or looked at the ground. “Now I know that’s not
true.”
The Arafura Sea provides
some of the world’s richest and most diverse fishing grounds, teeming with
mackerel, tuna, squid and many other species. Although it is Indonesian
territory, it draws many illegal fishing fleets, including from Thailand. The
trade that results affects the United States and other countries.
The US counts Thailand as one of its top seafood
suppliers, and buys about 20 per cent of the country’s $7 billion annual
exports in the industry. Last year, the State Department black-listed Thailand
for failing to meet minimum standards in fighting human trafficking, placing
the country in the ranks of North Korea, Syria and Iran. However, there were no
additional sanctions.
Thailand’s seafood industry is largely run off the backs
of migrant labourers, said Kendra Krieder, a State Department analyst who
focuses on supply chains. The treatment of some of these workers falls under
the US government’s definition of slavery, which includes forcing people to
keep working even if they once signed up for the jobs, or trafficking them into
situations where they are exploited.
“In the most extreme
cases, you’re talking about someone kidnapped or tricked into working on a
boat, physically beaten, chained,” said Krieder. “These situations would be
called modern slavery by any measure.”
 |
| Burmese slave Htun Lin Maung. |
The Thai government says
it is cleaning up the problem. On the bustling floor of North America’s largest
seafood show in Boston earlier this month, an official for the Department of
Fisheries laid out a plan to address labour abuse, including new laws that
mandate wages, sick leave and shifts of no more than 14 hours. However,
Kamonpan Awaiwanont stopped short when presented details about the men in
Benjina. “This is still happening now?” he asked. He paused. “We are trying to
solve it. This is ongoing.”
The Thai government also
promises a new national registry of illegal migrant workers, including more
than 100,000 flooding the seafood industry. However, policing has now become
even harder because decades of illegal fishing have depleted stocks close to
home, pushing the boats farther and deeper into foreign waters.
The Indonesian government
has called a temporary ban on most fishing, aiming to clear out foreign
poachers who take billions of dollars of seafood from the country’s waters. As
a result, more than 50 boats are now docked in Benjina, leaving up to 1,000
more slaves stranded onshore and waiting to see what will happen next.
Indonesian officials are
trying to enforce laws that ban cargo ships from picking up fish from boats at
sea. This practice forces men to stay on the water for months or sometimes years
at a time, essentially creating floating prisons.
Susi Pudjiastuti, the new
Fisheries Minister, said she has heard of different fishing companies putting
men in cells. She added that she believes the trawlers on Benjina may really
have Thai owners, despite the Indonesian paperwork, reflecting a common
practice of faking or duplicating licenses.
After the AP released its
report, she tweeted it and distributed copies of it in a meeting to a wide
range of high-ranking government officials, including police, a high court
judge, a prosecutor, the Navy and customs.
“I’m not going to tolerate
such a thing to continue happening in our waters,” she said in an interview.
She added that campaigns to save wildlife get far more attention than abuse
involving humans at sea. Illegal fishing is “killing people and nobody knows or
cares about this for so long,” she said.
SLAVES BOUGHT FOR $1000 EACH
The story of slavery in
the Thai seafood industry started decades ago with the same push-and-pull that
shapes economic immigration worldwide — the hope of escaping grinding poverty
to find a better life somewhere else.
 |
| Burmese Slave Kyaw Naing |
In recent years, as the
export business has expanded, it has become more difficult to convince young
Burmese or Cambodian migrants and impoverished Thais — all of whom were found
on Benjina — to accept the dangerous jobs. Agents have become more desperate
and ruthless, recruiting children and the disabled, lying about wages and even
drugging and kidnapping migrants, according to a former broker who spoke on
condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
The broker said agents
then sell the slaves, usually to Thai captains of fishing boats or the companies
that own them. Each slave typically costs around $1,000, according to Patima
Tungpuchayakul, manager of the Thai-based non-profit Labor Rights Promotion
Network Foundation. The men are later told they have to work off the “debt”
with wages that don’t come for months or years, or at all.
“The employers are
probably more worried about the fish than the workers’ lives,” she said. “They
get a lot of money from this type of business.”
Illegal Thai boats are
falsely registered to fish in Indonesia through graft, sometimes with the help
of government authorities. Praporn Ekouru, a Thai former member of Parliament,
admitted to the AP that he had bribed Indonesian officials to go into their
waters, and complained that the Indonesian government’s crackdown is hurting
business.
“In the past, we sent Thai
boats to fish in Indonesian waters by changing their flags,” said Praporn, who
is also chairman of the Songkhla Fisheries Association in southern Thailand.
“We had to pay bribes of millions of baht per year, or about 200,000 baht
($6,100) per month. The officials are not receiving money anymore because this
order came from the government.”
Illegal workers are given
false documents, because Thai boats cannot hire undocumented crew. One of the
slaves in Benjina, Maung Soe, said he was given a fake seafarer book belonging
to a Thai national, accepted in Indonesia as an informal travel permit. He
rushed back to his boat to dig up a crinkled copy. “That’s not my name, not my
signature,” he said angrily, pointing at the worn piece of paper. “The only
thing on here that is real is my photograph.”
 |
| Burmese Slave Maung Soe |
Soe said he had agreed to
work on a fishing boat only if it stayed in Thai waters, because he had heard
Indonesia was a place from which workers never came back. “They tricked me,” he
said. “They lied to me. ... They created fake papers and put me on the boat,
and now here I am in Indonesia.”
The slaves said the level
of abuse on the fishing boats depends on individual captains and assistants.
Aung Naing Win, who left a wife and two children behind in Myanmar two years
ago, said some fishermen were so depressed that they simply threw themselves
into the water. Win, 40, said his most painful task was working without proper
clothing in the ship’s giant freezer, where temperatures drop to 39 degrees
below zero. “It was so cold, our hands were burning,” he said. “No one really
cared if anyone died.”
‘THESE THINGS KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT’
The shipment the AP
tracked from the port of Benjina carried fish from smaller trawlers; AP
journalists talked to slaves on more than a dozen of them. A crane hoisted the
seafood onto a refrigerated cargo ship called the Silver Sea Line, with an
immense hold as big as 50 semi-trucks. At this point, by United Nations and US
standards, every fish in that hold is considered associated with slavery.
The ship belongs to the
Silver Sea Reefer Co, which is registered in Thailand and has at least nine
refrigerated cargo boats. The company said it is not involved with the
fishermen. “We only carry the shipment and we are hired in general by clients,”
said owner Panya Luangsomboon. “We’re separated from the fishing boats.”
The Gap followed the
Silver Sea Line by satellite over 15 days to Samut Sakhon. When it arrived,
workers on the dock packed the seafood over four nights onto more than 150
trucks, which then delivered their loads around the city.
One truck bore the name and bird logo of Kingfisher
Holdings Ltd, which supplies frozen and canned seafood around the world.
Another truck went to Mahachai Marine Foods Co., a cold storage business that
also supplies to Kingfisher and other exporters, according to Kawin Ngernanek,
whose family runs it. “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” said Kawin, who also serves as
spokesman for the Thai Overseas Fisheries Association. “Kingfisher buys several
types of products.”
When asked about abusive labour practices, Kingfisher did
not answer repeated requests for comment. Mahachai manager Narongdet Prasertsri
responded, “I have no idea about it at all.”
Every month, Kingfisher and its subsidiary KF Foods Ltd.
sends about 100 metric tons of seafood from Thailand to America, according to
US Customs Bills of Lading. These shipments have gone to Santa Monica Seafood,
Stavis Seafoods — located on Boston’s historic Fish Pier — and other distributors.
Richard Stavis, whose
grandfather started the dealership in 1929, shook his head when told about the
slaves whose catch may end up at businesses he buys from. He said his company
visits processors and fisheries, requires notarised certification of legal
practices and uses third-party audits.
“The truth is, these are
the kind of things that keep you up at night,” he said. “That’s the sort of
thing I want to stop. ... There are companies like ours that care and are
working as hard as they can.”
 |
| Graves of dead Burmese slaves. |
Wholesalers like Stavis
sell packages of fish, branded and unbranded, that can end up on supermarket
shelves with a private label or house brand. Stavis’ customers also include
Sysco, the largest food distributor in the US; there is no clear way to know which
particular fish was sold to them. Sysco declined an interview, but the
company’s code of conduct says it “will not knowingly work with any supplier
that uses forced, bonded, indentured or slave labour.”
Gavin Gibbons, a spokesman
for National Fisheries Institute, which represents about 75 per cent of the US
seafood industry, said the reports of abuse were “disturbing” and
“disheartening.” “But these type of things flourish in the shadows,” he said.
A similar pattern repeats
itself with other shipments and other companies, as the supply chain splinters
off in many directions in Samut Sakhon. It is in this Thai port that
slave-caught seafood starts to lose its history.
The Gap followed another
truck to Niwat Co, which sells to Thai Union Manufacturing Co, according to
part owner Prasert Luangsomboon. Weeks later, when confronted about forced
labour in their supply chain, Niwat referred several requests for comment to
Luangsomboon, who could not be reached for further comment.
Thai Union Manufacturing
is a subsidiary of Thai Union Frozen Products PCL, the country’s largest
seafood corporation, with $3.5 billion in annual sales. This parent company,
known simply as Thai Union, owns Chicken of the Sea and is buying Bumble Bee,
although the AP did not observe any tuna fisheries. In September, it became the
country’s first business to be certified by Dow Jones for sustainable
practices, after meeting environmental and social reviews.
Thai Union said it
condemns human rights violations, but multiple stakeholders must be part of the
solution. “We all have to admit that it is difficult to ensure the Thai seafood
industry’s supply chain is 100 per cent clean,” CEO Thiraphong Chansiri said in
an emailed statement.
Thai Union ships thousands
of cans of cat food to the US, including household brands like Fancy Feast,
Meow Mix and Iams. These end up on shelves of major grocery chains, such as
Kroger, Safeway and Albertsons, as well as pet stores; again, however, it’s
impossible to tell if a particular can of cat food might have slave-caught
fish.
After the AP’s story was
released Wednesday, the company issued an additional statement saying it had
immediately terminated business ties with a supplier after determining it might
be involved with forced labour and other abuses. It did not say which supplier.
“Thai Union embraces AP’s finding. It is utterly unacceptable,” it said. “This
is to prove that Thai Union takes the issue of human rights violation extremely
seriously.”
Wal-Mart described its
work with several nonprofits to end forced labour in Thailand, including
Project Issara, and referred the AP to Lisa Rende Taylor, its director. She
noted that slave-caught seafood can slip into supply chains undetected at
several points, such as when it is traded between boats or mingles with clean
fish at processing plants. She also confirmed that seafood sold at the Talay
Thai market — to where the AP followed several trucks — can enter international
supply chains.
“Transactions throughout
Thai seafood supply chains are often not well-documented, making it difficult
to estimate exactly how much seafood available on supermarket shelves around
the world is tainted by human trafficking and forced labour,” she said.
Poj Aramwattananont,
president of an industry group that represents Thai Union, Kingfisher and
others, said Thais are not “jungle people” and know that human trafficking is
wrong. However, he acknowledged that Thai companies cannot always track down
the origins of their fish.
“We don’t know where the
fish come from when we buy from Indonesia,” said Poj of the Thai Frozen Foods
Association. “We have no record. We don’t know if that fish is good or bad.”
BODIES TOSSED INTO THE SEA
The seafood the slaves on
Benjina catch may travel around the world, but their own lives often end right
here, in this island village. A crude cemetery holds more than 60 graves
strangled by tall grasses and jungle vines, where small wooden markers are
neatly labelled, some with the falsified names of slaves and boats. Only their
friends remember where they were laid to rest.
In the past, former slave
Hla Phyo said, supervisors on ships simply tossed bodies into the sea to be
devoured by sharks. But after authorities and companies started demanding that
every man be accounted for on the roster upon return, captains began stowing
corpses alongside the fish in ship freezers until they arrived back in Benjina,
the slaves said.
Lifting his knees as he
stepped over the thick brush, Phyo searched for two grave markers overrun by
weeds — friends he helped bury.
It’s been five years since
he himself escaped the sea and struggled to survive on the island. Every night,
his mind drifts back to his mother in Myanmar. He knows she must be getting old
now, and he desperately wants to return to her. Standing among so many
anonymous tombs stacked on top of each other, hopelessness overwhelms him.
“I’m starting to feel like
I will be in Indonesia forever,” he said, wiping a tear away. “I remember
thinking when I was digging, the only thing that awaits us here is death.”
