International report on crew abuse highlights abuse in New Zealand waters

As the Mar­itime Union fights for the rights of sea­far­ers in New Zealand waters, a new report from the Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) to the Unit­ed Nations paints a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of abus­es of human rights at sea.
The report names the case of the ‘Sky 75’ in New Zealand waters as one of “ruth­less exploita­tion of fish­ing crews.”
The New Zealand ITF and Mar­itime Union took action when 10 Indone­sian crew left the Kore­an reg­is­tered fish­ing ves­sel ‘Sky 75’ in the Port of Nel­son in Sep­tem­ber 2005.
Crew mem­bers on the ‘Sky 75’ report­ed abuse, harsh work­ing con­di­tions and extreme­ly poor con­di­tions.
The ITF report “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” warns that as a result of recruit­ing scams, ves­sel aban­don­ment and vir­tu­al forced labour, some sea­far­ers and fish­ers are suf­fer­ing hor­rif­ic abuse.
The report is being pre­sent­ed at a Unit­ed Nations mar­itime law sum­mit held in New York start­ing today 12 June until 16 June 2006.
The report expos­es some of the ter­ri­ble con­di­tions inflict­ed on some sea­far­ers and fish­ers, and high­lights sys­temic fail­ures in reg­u­la­tion and prac­tice.
“The mar­itime and fish­ing indus­tries con­tin­ue to allow aston­ish­ing abus­es of human rights of those work­ing in the sec­tor,” says the report.
Mar­itime Union Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Trevor Han­son says the report total­ly vin­di­cates the strong stance of the Union on the issue.
Since the Sky 75 there have been sev­er­al oth­er seri­ous inci­dents since the ‘Sky 75’, includ­ing crews jump­ing ship from the ‘San Lib­er­a­tore’ and ‘Mar­inui’, and more recent­ly a Ukrain­ian crew onboard the ‘Malakhov Kur­gan’ in Lyt­tel­ton who had to go on strike to be paid the min­i­mum wage.
“These are just the cas­es we have picked up on – I have no doubt these are the tip of the ice­berg,” says Mr Han­son.
The ITF report fol­lows a 2005 joint report from the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment, the ITF, and the glob­al con­ser­va­tion orga­ni­za­tion WWF, that revealed the pil­lag­ing of threat­ened fish stocks, human rights abus­es and glob­al pirate fish­ing oper­a­tions were all linked prob­lems.

The ITF report Out of Sight, Out of Mind can be down­loaded at the web­page list­ing ITF pub­li­ca­tions:
http://www.itfglobal.org/infocentre/pubs.cfm

The Aus­tralian Government/ITF/WWF report “The Chang­ing Nature of High Seas Fish­ing: How Flags of Con­ve­nience pro­vide cov­er for ille­gal, unre­port­ed and unreg­u­lat­ed (IUU) fish­ing” can be down­loaded at:
http://assets.panda.org/downloads/iiumr.pdf