Correspondence
August 21, 2023
1 inquiry
0 replies
Email sent to Tianjin Rongxiang Aquatic Products Co. Ltd.
The email said: "My name is Ian Urbina. I am the director of The Outlaw Ocean Project, a journalism organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States, and I'm working on a magazine story about labor issues and other crimes at sea on board vessels of the Chinese fishing fleet. We are reaching out to request a reply from the captain of the Jinhanyu 4879, which we mention in the story, to our statements below.
A diary kept by a Chinese deckhand, publishing by Henan Legal News, states the following:
- In May, 2013, the Chinese deckhand paid a manning agency a two-hundred-dollar recruitment fee, which dispatched him to a ship called the Jinhanyu 4879. The crew were told that their first ten days on board would be a trial period, after which they could leave, but the ship stayed at sea for a hundred and two days. “You are slaves to work anytime and anywhere,” he wrote in his diary.
- Officers got meat at mealtimes, he said, but deckhands got only bones. “The bell rings, you must be up, whether it is day, night, early morning, no matter how strong the wind, how tight the rain, there are no Sundays and holidays.”
We need an official response in writing from the captain of the Jinhanyu 4879 on the above statements by the end of the business day on Monday, August 28."
Future correspondence will be added here as this conversation continues.