China’s Slave Fishermen
Labour groups push to reform rampant abuses in the fishing industry
Over 100,000 people die annually in relation to the fishing industry, of which China is a world leader. However workers and campaigners have begun to speak up against human rights violations. This Al Jazeera report investigates.
“What we found definitively is that the Chinese fleet is engaged in pretty severe labour abuses, trafficking, wage theft, criminal neglect, people starving to death." Ian Urbina, a campaigner for the Outlaw Ocean Project, is on the forefront of the efforts to expose China’s seafood industry for its exploitative operations. Omer Kanat of the Human Rights project highlights the illegal exploitation of the Uighur population in particular: “China is using Uighurs as cheap labour, and these big companies are complicit.” Conditions onboard are unforgiving, as former deckhand Christian Yansen recalls, “we had to drink filtered sea water. With regards to sleeping time, during peak fishing season, the maximum we got was four hours”. Kanat emphasises that these cases of abuse go underreported as the sites are so disconnected from the rest of the world, thousands of miles from the shore. As the evidence piles up, we are left to question the true cost of cheap seafood.
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