A fleet of Chinese fishing vessels used North Korean crews between 2019 and last year in a breach of a UN ban, and many people were apparently subjected to abuses, including being trapped at sea for years, a report said on Monday.
The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), a London-based group specializing in environmental and human rights issues, said it had identified the presence of North Koreans on 12 Chinese tuna long-liners operating in the southwest Indian Ocean. The report was mostly based on interviews with 19 Indonesians and Filipinos who worked alongside them.
“The testimony received from Indonesian and Filipino crew members suggests that concerted efforts were made to hide the presence of North Koreans on these vessels, and that those North Koreans on board were forced to work for as many as 10 years at sea — in some instances without ever stepping foot on land,” the report said.
Photo: AP
“This would constitute forced labor of a magnitude that surpasses much of that witnessed in a global fishing industry already replete with abuse,” it added.
The group said the North Koreans were passed from vessel to vessel to prevent them from returning to land. It cited unidentified Asian crew members as saying their North Korean shipmates were not allowed to use mobile phones or leave vessels during port visits.
The group said it was not able to estimate the number of North Koreans aboard the Chinese vessels because of the transfers.
The use of North Korean crew would be a breach of 2017 UN Security Council resolutions that required member states not to issue work permits to North Koreans and repatriate all remaining North Korean workers from their territories by the end of 2019.
The sanctions were adopted after North Korea conducted nuclear and long-range missile tests in a breach of earlier council resolutions.
The group said the use of North Korean crews also appears to have bypassed legal frameworks in the UK and the EU designed to prevent goods produced by North Koreans from entering their supply chains.
The EJF said that it also found ships that were suspected of collecting fish from the Chinese vessels had entered key markets in Asia, including Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
Along with Russia, China is suspected of not fully enforcing UN sanctions on North Korea and has vetoed US-led efforts to toughen UN sanctions on North Korea despite its banned weapons tests.
Asked about the EJF report, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian (林劍) on Monday told a news conference that he was not not familiar with it, but said that China carries out offshore fishing in accordance with laws and regulations.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS