Latest news with #OutlawOcean
Daily Maverick
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Maverick
Listen — the undisputed superpower of the seas (China pt. 1) Episode 6
Spread across the Earth's oceans, the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet is the single largest armada in human history. This three-part series is an unprecedented investigation into their secretive fishing practices. The fleet is so gargantuan that even the Chinese government can't account for all its vessels. We do know it has hauled in more than $35-billion worth of catch per year and sold it across the globe – and yet, almost nothing was known about its practices. That is, until the Outlaw Ocean team started asking questions, and eventually managed to get aboard. Episode highlights: Averaging one dead body every six weeks, mostly-Chinese fishing vessels have been dropping off their deceased in Uruguay's coastal capital for years. But in 2021, an Indonesian deckhand named Daniel Aritonang arrives clinging to life. He's conscious enough to say he'd been beaten, tied up by the neck and starved for days; We learn Daniel's story is shockingly common in the world's Chinese-run fish processing infrastructure. It's a realm where health and human safety are secondary to meeting quotas and where forced labour and human rights abuses are rampant. We learn how vulnerable people like Daniel are recruited, and how routinely they never make it home; and The team is convinced that they need to speak directly to the crew on one of these vessels. They themselves are shocked when a captain agrees to let them aboard. Even more surprising, a minder briefly leaves host Ian Urbina alone with the crew and immediately some men plead to be rescued.
Daily Maverick
20-06-2025
- Daily Maverick
Listen: A team of journalists at gunpoint (Libya, Part 3)
We follow the harrowing story of Aliou Candé — a 28-year-old farmer and father from Guinea-Bissau — whose dream of a better life ended in one of Libya's brutal migrant prisons. The Libyan Coast Guard is doing the European Union's dirty work, capturing migrants as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean into Europe and throwing them in secret prisons. There, they are extorted, abused and sometimes killed. An investigation into the death of Aliou Candé, a young farmer and father from Gineau-Bisseau, puts the Outlaw Ocean team in the crosshairs of Libya's violent and repressive regime. In this stunning three-part series, we take you inside the walls of one of the most dangerous prisons, in a lawless regime where the world's forgotten migrants languish. Episode highlights Host Ian Urbina is detained, beaten and brought to a secret prison jail. He believes he is going to die. And still, he knows this is only 'a sliver of what the migrants we are covering go through'. Ian learns his team is being held in the same facility. They make proof-of-life videos as their respective governments intervene to get them out. Ian reflects on Western privilege and the lottery of birth. He, unlike Candé, gets to go home. He also gets to report what he saw: a war on migration. A war with an army, a navy, and an air force. A war likely to spread as more poor, desperate migrants risk it all to reach safer shores. DM
Los Angeles Times
18-06-2025
- Los Angeles Times
LA Times Today: Outlaw Ocean podcast exposes crimes, lawlessness at sea
Two-thirds of planet Earth is covered by water, and much of that area is completely ungoverned, making it an easy place for human rights violations in the fishing industry, to environmental offences and even pirates, you may be unaware of what really happens at sea. But the 'Outlaw Ocean' podcast is exposing the lawlessness. Ian Urbina is the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist behind the series.
Daily Maverick
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Listen: A place ‘worse than hell' (Libya, Part 2)
Part Two of the harrowing story of Aliou Candé — a 28-year-old farmer and father from Guinea-Bissau — whose dream of a better life ended in one of Libya's brutal migrant prisons. The Libyan Coast Guard is doing the European Union's dirty work, capturing migrants as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean into Europe and throwing them in secret prisons. There, they are extorted, abused and sometimes killed. An investigation into the death of Aliou Candé, a young farmer and father from Guinea-Bissau, puts the Outlaw Ocean team in the cross-hairs of Libya's violent and repressive regime. advertisement Don't want to see this? Remove ads In this three-part series, we take you inside the walls of one of the most dangerous prisons in a lawless regime where the world's forgotten migrants languish. Listen to part one here Episode 2 highlights The EU has claimed it plays no role in this migrant crisis, even as it provides boats, buses, petrol — even the tablets the Libyans use to count their captives. Once captured and counted, those migrants are often held in a network of secretive prisons run by competing militias, where exploitation, abuse and death are common. They are also routinely 'rented' as everything from farm labour to soldiers in battle. Aliou Candé was sent to a prison where he died at the hands of prison guards while trying to protect himself in a melee. 'I'm not going to fight. I'm the hope of my entire family,' he said. DM
