BENJINA, Indonesia — Officials from three countries are traveling to remote islands in eastern Indonesia to investigate how thousands of foreign fishermen were abused and forced into catching seafood that could end up in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
A week after The Associated Press published a story about slavery in the seafood industry — including video of men locked in a cage — delegations from Thailand and Indonesia visited the island village of Benjina. A government team from Myanmar, otherwise known as Burma, is also scheduled to tour the area next week to try to determine how many of its citizens are stuck there and what can be done to bring them home.
The visits reflect how the problem stretches across several countries, and how difficult it has been to resolve. The migrant workers lured or even kidnapped into fishing are usually from Myanmar, one of the poorest countries in the world, along with Cambodia, Laos and impoverished areas of Thailand. They are brought from Thailand to fishing boats in Indonesia, where many say they are beaten, made to work long hours with little or no pay, and prevented from leaving. Their catch is then shipped back to Thailand, where it enters global markets, the AP story documented.
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