For six months, Indian fisherman S. George lived in fear on a boat, thinking he would never see his wife and children again.
George was one of 15 fishermen from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu detained in October last year on charges of straying into Iranian waters while fishing in the region, officials said.
Reaching their homes last week, after months with no contact with their families, the fishermen said nothing had prepared them for the ordeal they went through when they left their homes in 2014 to work on fishing boats off the coast of Bahrain.
“Once we were trapped, there were days of confusion,” George said. “It was not clear to us that we had crossed international waters into Iran while fishing and were being detained. What followed we never imagined could happen.”
There are an estimated 6 million Indian migrants in the six Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Oman, many of them trafficked and exploited, according to campaigners.
“We are seeing increasing cases of fishermen being detained,” said Josephine Valarmathi of the National Domestic Workers’ Movement, based in Chennai. “Even as this lot of fishermen have returned, another 24 have been caught in the same circumstances and are now stranded. Most of them are not clear on what visa they have traveled, or the terms and conditions of the workplace.”
George said they were given very little food, forced to drink water from toilets, made to do sit-ups and often went hungry.
After being held in a jail in Iran for a few days, the fishermen were kept on their boats off the coast.
“We were under constant watch,” George said. “Sometimes we were given just one roti [bread] and survived on that all day. We earn our livelihoods from fishing, but living on a boat under fear of death was not what we had signed up for.”
A. Maria Joseph Kennady said language was a barrier to understanding of what was going on.
“We were forced into a prison for four days and then back on the boat. We were herded like cattle,” Kennady said.
Officials at the Iranian embassy in New Delhi declined to comment on the matter.
According to the 2015 Tamil Nadu Migration Survey, the first comprehensive study on emigration from the state, roughly every 10th household has one or more workers abroad.
The survey showed that a migrant spends an average of 100,000 rupees (US$1,500) to secure a job overseas, with half going to recruitment agencies, and the rest for visas and travel.
The survey of 20,000 households also revealed that 39 percent of women and 21 percent of men who work abroad reported not receiving the promised wages.
“Often workers get duped, can’t deal with the work situation in the Gulf and come back in adverse circumstances, forgoing their income,” survey coauthor Bernard D’Sami said. “They then get trapped in an unending cycle of debt that sometimes forces them to go back to the Gulf and work.”
Paid on the basis of the catch they brought back from the sea, the fishermen said they were back home with no savings and big loans that needed to be paid back.
The fishermen called for urgent action to prevent others suffering similar ordeals.
“I didn’t understand or assess the risks, and nobody told me either,” said George, now worried about repaying the nearly 100,000 rupee loan he took out to get to Bahrain. “So many people dream of a Gulf job. The government needs to make sure it doesn’t become a nightmare.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in