The market could force reluctant Taiwanese seafood traders to address concerns over complicity in human rights abuses.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/05/28
By: Nick Aspinwall
Photo Credit: Greenpeace
A shocking Greenpeace report released last week details forced labor and physical abuse at sea, including the death of Indonesian fisherman Supriyanto. It also makes disturbing connections between human trafficking operations and Taiwan’s largest seafood trader.
The report, “Misery at Sea,” casts Taiwan’s deep-sea fishing industry as operating in a state of perpetual anarchy, enabled by regulatory apathy, corporate culpability, and a stunning lack of transparency.
Greenpeace highlighted the role of Taiwan’s Fong Chun Formosa (FCF), Taiwan’s dominant seafood trader and a major provider of seafood to the American, European, and Japanese markets. “What you have been eating in your tuna can in the U.S. market, from Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee – they are all being provided their tuna by FCF,” investigation leader Yi Chiao Lee (李宜蕎) told The News Lens.
The report says that FCF continues to trade with vessels implicated in the Giant Ocean human trafficking case, in which Cambodian authorities found six Taiwanese nationals guilty of “unlawful removal with purpose” of local fisherman, and sentenced each to 10 years imprisonment. [FULL STORY]
