Human Bondage aboard Fishing Boats

Tempo and an independent publication from Taiwan, The Reporter, investigated cases of human trafficking and enslavement aboard fishing trawlers. There are tens of thousands of Indonesian crew members aboard Taiwanese fishing boats operating on international waters. Having no official documents, these seamen are not listed as migrant workers by both governments of Indonesia and Taiwan, rendering them vulnerable to abuse, maltreatment and possibly fatal torture.

The reporting and research of this investigative report was a collaboration between Tempo, the Tempo Institute, and Free Press Unlimited.

January 10, 2017

Mualip showed Setiawan three video clips of his dead cousin Supriyanto, a few days before his family received his body on September 27, 2015. As if hypnotized by the visuals on his cellular phone, Setiawan asked Mualip not to show them to anyone. "I was worried that those pictures would upset my relatives, as Supriyanto"s body still had not arrived," Setiawan told Tempo, in early December a year later.

A month earlier, on August 25, Setiawan receive

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