The News Lens
Date: 2018/07/25
By: Nick Aspinwall
A Taiwanese vessel docked in South Africa recently became the first to ever be
detained under a new UN convention preventing labor abuse at sea. In Taipei, advocates are fed up.
Demonstrators gathered outside the Civil Service Development Institute in Taipei this morning to usher in the 2018 International Workshop to Combat Human Trafficking.
Organized by the Ministry of the Interior (MoI), the event highlights Taiwan’s ongoing commitment to stop forced labor, but the event’s roster of legislators and speakers will have to tend to a persistent thorn in their side: labor abuse of migrant workers in the fishing industry.
Taiwan’s maligned distant water fleet made the news for all the wrong reasons last week, when its vessel Fuh Sheng No. 11 became the first ship ever detained for violating the International Labour Organization (ILO) Work in Fishing Convention (also known as C188). South African authorities apprehended and inspected the vessel at port in Cape Town following complaints from the crew about poor work and living conditions. [FULL STORY]