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Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
That seafood on your plate? It might have been produced by forced labor.
The event was part of a vast labor-transfer program run by the Chinese state, which The goal of the program is partially to address labor needs in Chinese industries. But another goal is to subjugate a historically restive people. Uyghur separatists revolted throughout the 1990s and bombed police stations in 2008 and 2014. China began the labor transfers in the early 2000s as part of a broad camps, where Uyghurs have been subjected to torture, beatings, and forced sterilization. Researchers described China's actions against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims Many of the transferred workers are involved in processing seafood that is then exported to more than 20 countries, including the United States, Canada, and several in the European Union, according to an investigation published as episode 8 of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast's second season. The podcast is available on all major streaming platforms. For transcripts, background reporting, and bonus content, visit These disclosures of China's use of state-sponsored forced labor in seafood production come as the trade war between the US and China has heightened tensions between the countries and directed new attention to the This is an American law that prohibits the import of goods produced in Xinjiang and a cudgel that the Trump administration is likely to apply more aggressively as it ramps up pressure on Beijing. 'We worked yesterday. Worked last night. We are still working,' a Uyghur man says in a voice clip uploaded to Douyin in 2021 over snapshots of exhausted workers on pallets of flounder packed for export. Douyin/The Outlaw Ocean Project On November 19, 2024, the European Union approved its own A review by Outlaw Ocean Project of internal company newsletters, local news reports, trade data, and satellite imagery revealed that 10 large seafood companies in the eastern province of Shandong, China's most important fishing and seafood processing hub, have received at least a thousand Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities from forced labor-transfer programs out of Xinjiang since 2018. Sometimes transfers are motivated by labor demands. In March 2020, for example, the Chishan Group, one of China's largest seafood catching and processing companies, published an internal newsletter describing what it called the 'huge production pressure' caused by the pandemic. That October, party officials from the local antiterrorist detachment of China's public security bureau and the country's human resources and social security bureau, which handles work transfers, met twice with executives to discuss how to find the company additional labor, according to company newsletters. Soon after, Chishan agreed to accelerate transfers to their plants. Wang Shanqiang, the deputy general manager at Chishan, said in a corporate newsletter, 'The company looks forward to the migrant workers from Xinjiang arriving soon.' The Chishan Group did not respond to requests for comment. Workers in 2023 at a seafood plant called Yantai Sanko Fisheries in Shandong Province, China, which relies on Uyghur and other labor from Xinjiang and exports to the U.S., Canada, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Douyin/The Outlaw Ocean Project To detect forced labor, companies tend to rely on private firms that conduct 'social audits,' in which inspectors visit factories to make sure they comply with international work standards. But social audits are typically announced in advance, which allows managers to hide minority workers during inspections. Even when workers are interviewed, they are often reluctant to be candid, for fear of retribution. In May 2022, social auditors from SGS, a major international auditing firms, toured the Haibo seafood processing factory in Shandong and found no evidence of forced labor. But a team of investigative reporters from Outlaw Ocean Project discovered that more than 170 people from Xinjiang worked at Haibo in 2021, and a half-dozen Uyghur workers posted regularly to social media from Haibo throughout 2022. On the same day the auditors toured, a young Uyghur worker posted pictures of herself near the plant's dormitories and loading bays. This was not an isolated incident. During the investigation, reporters found other examples of Uyghurs who had posted pictures of themselves at factories within days of those plants being cleared by social audits. They also found that half of the Chinese exporters they had identified as being tied to Uyghur labor had passed audits by leading global inspection firms. Two Uyghur researchers who independently reviewed hundreds social media videos archived by Outlaw Ocean Project concluded that Uyghurs working at Shandong seafood facilities were using coded content to convey critical perspectives on their experiences through humor, poetry and song. Posts alluded to strong sentiments of loss and separation, and offered direct and indirect references to coercion and involuntary transfer, as well as commentary on poor working conditions. The bigger point, however, is that the Chishan Group or Haibo are not unique cases. What we found in our investigation tracking and documenting Xinjiang minorities who had been deployed to seafood processing plants in Shandong was that many seafood companies are tied to a wide variety of similar problems with forced labor. The presence of Uyghur workers in these major seafood processing plants should not be viewed as incidental. It is a glaring red flag. The pervasiveness of these problems is why the global seafood industry likely will have to assess how it monitors its supply chains, especially when these supply chains route through China.
Boston Globe
12-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
An ancient scourge on a modern Chinese fishing boat
Daniel Aritonang, right, poses with other crew members on the deck of the Zhen Fa 7 on July 7, 2021. The Outlaw Ocean Project/Ferdi Arnando/Facebook When Aritonang climbed onto his assigned squid ship, called the Zhen Fa 7, he joined what may be the largest maritime operation the world has ever known. In the past few decades, partly in an effort to project its influence abroad, China has dramatically expanded its distant-water fishing fleet. Chinese firms now own or operate terminals in 95 foreign ports. China estimates that it has twenty-seven hundred distant-water fishing ships, though this figure does not include vessels in contested waters; public records and satellite imaging suggest that the fleet may be closer to sixty-five hundred ships. (The United States and the European Union, by contrast, have fewer than three hundred distant-water fishing vessels each.) Chinese squid ships, which make up the largest distant water fleet in the world, fish near the Falkland Islands. Ed Ou//The Outlaw Ocean Project Some ships that appear to be fishing vessels press territorial claims in contested waters, including in the South China Sea and around Taiwan. 'This may look like a fishing fleet, but, in certain places, it's also serving military purposes,' Ian Ralby, who runs I.R. Consilium, a maritime-security firm, said. But China's preeminence at sea has come at a cost. The country is largely unresponsive to international laws, and its fleet is the worst perpetrator of illegal fishing in the world, helping drive species to the brink of extinction. Its ships are also rife with labor trafficking, debt bondage, violence, criminal neglect, and death. 'The human rights abuses on these ships are happening on an industrial and global scale,' said Steve Trent, the CEO of the Environmental Justice Foundation. Related : The investigation into Aritonang's death is part of Season 2 of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast, which derives from four years of reporting, mostly at sea. The podcast is available on all major streaming platforms. For transcripts, background reporting, and bonus content, visit Before taking the job on the Chinese ship, Aritonang had struggled to find work. The rate of unemployment in his native Indonesia was high: more than 5.5 percent nationally, and more than 16 per cent for youth. Climate change has made matters worse; many of Indonesia's 17,000 islands are sinking. Aritonang's home is roughly 100 yards from the Indian Ocean. His village is losing coast from sea level rise at an average of between 10 and 15 yards a year. When Hengki Anhar, a local friend, suggested the two of them go abroad together on a fishing boat, Aritonang agreed. Friends and family were surprised by his decision, because the demands of the job were so high and the pay so low. But a job was a job, and both he and Anhar desperately needed work. The Chinese squid jigger Fu Yuan Yu 7619 prepares to begin fishing near the Galapagos Islands at sunset in July 2022. Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project In 2019, Aritonang and Anhar contacted a 'manning' agency based in Central Java. In the maritime world, manning agencies recruit and supply workers to fishing ships. These agencies handle everything, including paychecks, work contracts, plane tickets, port fees, and visas. They are poorly regulated, frequently abusive, and have been connected to human trafficking. Following the agency's instructions, Aritonang and Anhar went to the Javanese city of Tegal. They took medical exams and handed over their passports and bank documents. For the next two months, they waited to hear if they had been hired. Money ran short. Through Facebook Messenger, Aritonang wrote to his friend Firmandes Nugraha, asking for help paying for food. Nugraha urged him to return home. 'You don't even know how to swim,' Nugraha reminded him. Eventually assignments came through and, in September 2019, Aritonang appeared in a Facebook photo with other Indonesians waiting in Busan, South Korea, to board their fishing vessels. 'Just a bunch of not-high-ranking people who want to be successful by having a bright future,' Aritonang posted on Facebook. Aritonang and Anhar boarded the Zhen Fa 7, which set sail across the Pacific. The ship's crew numbered 30 men: 20 from China, and the remaining 10 from Indonesia. The vessel was scheduled to spend the next several months chasing squid in international waters off the coast of South America. In December, 2020, the Zhen Fa 7 left the vicinity of the Galapagos Islands, sailed around the southern tip of South America, through the Strait of Magellan, and made its way north to an immensely productive high-seas squid fishery known as the Blue Hole, about 360 miles above the Falkland Islands. The bounty was plentiful there, and the captain began working his crew around the clock. A month later, Aritonang fell severely ill. According to a forensic pathologist who examined his autopsy report at the request of the Outlaw Ocean Project, he probably suffered from a disease called beriberi, caused by a deficiency of vitamin B1, also known as thiamine. Daniel Aritonang lies on a stretcher with swollen feet, a telltale sign of beriberi caused by nutrition deficiency. Jesica Reyes Sometimes called 'rice disease,' and often an indication of conditions of captivity, beriberi has historically broken out on ships and in prisons, asylums, and migrant camps — anywhere diets have consisted mainly of white rice or wheat flour, both very poor sources of thiamine. On board the Zhen Fa 7, the captain issued each Indonesian two boxes of Supermi instant noodles per week for free. The costs for any additional snacks, coffee, alcohol, or cigarettes were deducted from their salaries. The Indonesians were paid $250 per month, along with a $20 bonus per ton of squid caught. Related : The Indonesians on board begged the captain to get Aritonang onshore for medical attention, but the captain refused. Later, when asked to explain the captain's refusal, Anhar, Aritonang's friend and crewmate, said, 'There was still a lot of squid. We were in the middle of an operation.' By February 2021, Aritonang could no longer stand. He moaned in pain, slipping in and out of consciousness. Incensed, the Indonesian crew threatened to strike and the captain finally acquiesced. The Chinese squid jigger Zhe Pu Yuan 98 doubles as a floating hospital to treat deckhands without bringing them to shore. Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project On March 2, Aritonang was transferred to a nearby fuel tanker called the Marlin, which dropped him off in Montevideo six days later. By then it was too late. For several hours, emergency room doctors struggled to keep him alive, while Jesica Reyes, a local interpreter who had been summoned to speak to Aritonang in Bahasa, Indonesia's official language, waited anxiously in the hall. Eventually the doctors emerged from the emergency room to tell her that he had died. In an email, a spokesperson for the Zhen Fa 7's owner, Rongcheng Wangdao Ocean Aquatic Products Co. Ltd., declined to comment on Aritonang's death but said that the company had found no evidence of complaints from the crew about living or working conditions on the vessel. The company added that it had handed the matter over to the China Overseas Fisheries Association, which regulates the industry. Questions submitted to that agency by The Outlaw Ocean Project went unanswered. In the months after an investigation by the
Boston Globe
06-07-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Forced labor in the shrimp industry, and a whistleblower's efforts to expose it
Joshua Farinella, formerly the general manager of the plant in Amalapuram, India. Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project Farinella's dream quickly turned into a nightmare. He soon discovered that the plant's largely female employees were effectively trapped on the compound, routinely underpaid, and forced to live in inhumane, unsanitary conditions. The managers were also misleading auditors and processing shrimp with banned antibiotics. It soon dawned on him that he'd been hired as an American face to 'whitewash' a forced-labor factory. Over several months, Farinella meticulously gathered evidence that he brought to The Outlaw Ocean team. The results of that investigation are the subject of the fifth episode of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast, Season 2. The podcast is available on all major streaming platforms. For transcripts, background reporting, and bonus content, visit Female workers in full PPE work grueling hours processing shrimp at Choice Canning Plant #4. Some reported they had not had a day off work in over two years. Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project In recent years, India has exploded as the dominant source of shrimp for much of the world, with support from its government through subsidies and loosened foreign investment restrictions. In 2021, India exported more than $5 billion of shrimp globally and was responsible for nearly a quarter of the world's shrimp exports. Choice Canning is one of the largest Indian suppliers in the market, with corporate offices in two big Indian cities, Kochi and Chennai, as well as in Jersey City, N.J. Choice Canning categorically denied Farinella's claims and said that the company never underpaid workers, prevented them from leaving without permission, or maintained subpar living conditions. On any given day, there might be more than 650 workers at the plant, typically hired by third-party contractors. Hundreds of the workers lived locally in Andhra Pradesh and went home at the end of each day. The rest were migrant workers recruited from impoverished corners of the country who lived at the plant. A security guard was usually posted outside near the building's front door. Farinella found migrant workers living on the compound in deplorable circumstances, like shared beds with bedbug-infested mattresses. There were also dangerous conditions, including a secret dorm above the plants' ammonia compressors. He realized there were hundreds more people living on site than the paperwork accounted for, and they could not freely leave. At Choice Canning plant #4 in Amalapuram, India, in a hidden, off-books men's dorm located on top of an ammonia compressor shed, some workers were forced to sleep on the floor because of a lack of beds. Joshua Farinella At 3 a.m. on November 11, 2023, a manager sent Farinella a WhatsApp message informing him that a woman had been found running through the plant's water treatment facility. 'She was searching for a way out of here,' the manager wrote. 'Her contractor is not allowing her to go home.' The woman made it as far as the main gate but was turned back by guards. Forbidding workers to leave their plants is a violation of the Indian constitution and also likely violates the country's penal code, according to the The rear wall of the factory grounds, as seen here through the plant's security cameras, was the site of a reported escape by one of the migrant workers. After the incident, the plant management ordered the walls to be "repaired" so that no other workers could get out. Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project On January 3, 2024, reported that a group of about 70 workers, many of them women, marched to a police station in the Andhra Pradesh province to demand that action be taken against a labor contractor at their workplace, the nearby Choice Canning shrimp factory. The workers alleged that the plant's labor contractor stole approximately $2,600 in wages, equivalent to about two years of an average worker's salary. They also demanded a manager be charged for abusive language under Indian legislation that seeks to prevent hate crimes against members of underprivileged castes — many of the workers were members of India's lowest caste, called Dalits, or untouchables. After local media covered the incident, Choice Canning's human resources officer emailed Farinella to say they had already properly paid a contractor, who then withheld payment from the workers. Following police intervention, the contractor repaid roughly $1,600 to the workers. Farinella was concerned when he found workers sleeping on the floor, but he said he and others struggled to get authorization to improve conditions. A few weeks later during a recorded conversation with two labor contractors for Choice Canning, he discovered that 150 workers had not had a day off in a year. It was also hard, he said, to tell how long employees spent working. A human resources executive admitted candidly in a Zoom meeting recorded by Farinella how she planned to modify attendance records and timecards in preparation for an upcoming audit by a German supermarket chain. Workers peel shrimp at an off-books peeling shed for Choice Canning in Amalapuram, India in February of 2024. Joshua Farinella Processing seafood is a race against the clock to prevent spoilage, so the Choice Canning plant in Amalapuram runs more or less 24/7. There's also not a lot of automation in shrimp processing, so this means that the factory relies on an enormous amount of labor to deliver 40 shipping containers full of packaged shrimp every single day. The same week that the whistleblower documents were published by After leaving his job at Choice Canning in February 2024, Farinella returned to the United States and filed whistleblower complaints to several federal agencies. These complaints allege a variety of food safety violations, including that the company knowingly and illegally exported shrimp that had tested positive for antibiotics to major American brands in violation of federal law. The shrimp processed at the plant came from nearby aquaculture farms like this one. Farinella said it was often unclear which farms supplied the plant because deliveries from certified and uncertified farms were routinely commingled. Ben Blankenship/The Outlaw Ocean Project Farinella's whisteblowing has had impact. In 2024, the US Department of Labor placed India's shrimp industry into the 'forced labor' category in its This April, President Trump signed an executive order promoting domestic fishing and seafood production, including by raising tariffs on Indian shrimp. The US shrimp industry commended the decisions, suggesting that federal agencies and the administration may be responding — directly or indirectly — to the types of abuses Farinella exposed. But for Farinella himself, his decision to speak out has come with a personal cost. 'Now when I submit a resume, I can't even get the courtesy of a rejection email,' he said in a recent interview. Still, he has been struck by the impact his decision to reveal the industry's dirty secrets has had. 'I was very surprised with how quickly it took off and how many people were paying attention to it,' he said. Maybe, he still hopes, he has helped push the industry toward necessary change.
Boston Globe
30-06-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Was your cargo ship hijacked? Try this guy.
Hardberger runs a rare kind of repo service — extracting huge ships from foreign ports. His company is a last resort for shipowners whose vessels have been seized, often by bad actors. And over the years he's built a reputation for taking the kinds of jobs others turn down. Hardberger's specialty is infiltrating hostile territory and taking control of ships in whatever way he can — usually through subterfuge and stealth. Wherever in the world his missions take him, Hardberger thrives in its grey areas. He handles the toughest of grab-and-dash jobs in foreign harbors, usually on behalf of banks, insurers, or shipowners. A last-resort solution to a common predicament, he is called when a vessel has been stolen, its operators have defaulted on their mortgage, or a ship has been fraudulently detained by local officials. Advertisement The public perception of modern piracy usually involves Somalis in fast boats capturing tankers on the high seas. Of late, the Houthis launching from Yemen have revived global concern about attacks on merchant vessels and the global importance of maritime commerce, since more than 90 percent of all products reach consumers by way of ships. But the more common though overlooked threat at sea is white-collar piracy: schemes where ships get held captive in port through bureaucratic or administrative means. The pirates are actually different groups of mortgage lenders, lawyers, shipowners, or shipping companies, and they might be sitting in an office a half a world away from the ship. Max Hardberger, third from right, and Ian Urbina of the Outlaw Ocean Project, second from right, pose with the Haitian marine police after several days of patrols. The Outlaw Ocean Project And sometimes when the ships are caught up in this kind of piracy, a repo man gets the call. This type of offshore crime and the role of maritime repo men is the subject of the fourth episode of The Outlaw Ocean Podcast, Season 2, during which a reporting team trailed Hardberger on an especially tough mission in Greece. The podcast is available on all major streaming platforms. For transcripts, background reporting, and bonus content, visit Port scams are as old as shipping itself and seasoned repo men can identify them by name. 'Unexpected complications': a shipyard makes repairs without permission, then sends the owner an astronomical bill, often for more than the value of the ship, hoping to force its forfeiture. 'Barratry': buying off crews, sometimes paying more than a year's wages to leave a ship's keys and walk away. 'A docking play': a shipowner defaults on his mortgage, but is in cahoots with a marina, which charges the repossessor hyperinflated docking fees. Advertisement Consumers are affected by the theft and corruption because it adds millions of dollars to transport costs and insurance rates, raising sticker prices by more than 10 percent, maritime researchers say. Tens of thousands of boats or ships are stolen around the world each year and are difficult to find because the ocean is vast, the search is often too expensive, and because ships frequently end up in ports with uncooperative or corrupt officials. But when the boat or ship is more valuable, 'repo men' like Hardberger are hired to find it. Most recoveries of stolen boats and maritime repossessions involve doing paperwork and working with banks and local law enforcement. But when negotiations fail, waterborne jailbreaks sometimes occur. The moment that catapulted Hardberger into the spotlight came in 2004, when his team was hired to find the Maya Express, whose mortgagee was looking to use the ship as collateral on a loan but couldn't find it. They found the Maya Express in Miragoane, Haiti, a small port village, and learned that a judicial auction was set to take place in just two days, threatening to complicate the repossession. 'We had to do something in two days. We could not wait,' Hardberger told The Outlaw Ocean Project. So, accompanied by two armed SWAT agents, Hardberger approached the men guarding the Maya Express and offered $300 to each of them to leave. With the guards out of the way, Hardberger and his team hitched the vessel to a tugboat and began the delicate task of cutting the anchor chains. 'Unfortunately it was a full moon and not a cloud in the sky. The entire bay was lit up so people came running down from the hills to see what was going on,' Hardberger recalled. Advertisement Whenever onlookers came near the ship, the two armed men kept them on the dock and did not let anybody leave until the anchor chain was fully cut. Once the ship was free, the tugboat pulled the Maya Express into international waters and eventually toward the Bahamas. 'It was the worst possible condition for an extraction but we managed to get it out,' Hardberger said. All of the repo men The Outlaw Ocean Project talked to said they abide by certain self-imposed rules. No violence — better, they said, to hire street youths for lookouts, bar owners for diversions, and prostitutes to flirt their way on board to spy. To talk his way on board, Mr. Hardberger said he has a collection of fake uniforms and official-sounding business cards, among them 'Port Inspector,' 'Marine Surveyor,' and 'Internal Auditor.' He also carries a glass vial of magnetic powder to sprinkle on the hull to reveal lettering that has been welded off. Officials from the Haitian Coast Guard, Interpol, and the bar association in California, where Hardberger is licensed, said they had no records of complaints, disciplinary actions, or arrest warrants against him. When we asked Hardberger how much longer he thinks he can keep doing this work, he replied, 'I don't know. As long as I can run to the end of the dock and jump in the water and swim to safety, I guess.'
