Hundreds of Vietnamese fishermen stranded in Indonesia amid COVID-19 restrictions
December 16,2020
| Source:
BenarNews
More than 200 Vietnamese arrested by Indonesia for illegal fishing in its waters have been stranded in a detention center for months, their representative told Radio Free Asia, a sister agency of Benar News, via emailed video clips.
Many of them are free to go home, but the Vietnamese embassy says the coronavirus pandemic is delaying their return, a Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry spokesman told BenarNews late last week.
The Vietnamese fishermen, meanwhile, hope a social media campaign will spur their government to bring them back.
“About 200 fishermen are being detained at Tanjung Pinang center, many among them have been here for two or three years,” fisherman Ho Van Hieu, who is a representative of his detained compatriots, told RFA, referring to a center in Indonesia’s Riau Islands at the southern end of the South China Sea.
“Now, we hope the Vietnamese government helps bring us home in order to reunite with our families.”
A spokesman for Indonesia’s Marine Affairs and Fisheries Ministry told BenarNews that during 2020, 225 Vietnamese crew members were arrested for illegal fishing in Indonesia’s Fisheries Management Area.
“Of these, 26 are suspects while 199 are not suspects,” said Didik Agus, the ministry spokesman.
The ministry had contacted the Vietnamese government via its embassy in Jakarta about those allowed to return home, he said.
“The crew members who are not charged, based on the provisions of international and national law, have been allowed to return home from the beginning. However, the process of returning home certainly depends on the Flag State [the fishermen's country of origin], which should pay for their return,” Didik said.
“Communication has been made with the Government of Vietnam through its embassy in Jakarta; however, the Vietnamese Embassy has conveyed information that the COVID-19 pandemic situation poses significant obstacles to repatriating its citizens.”
It is usually crew members who are allowed to go back to their home countries, Abdi Suhufan, of the non-profit environmental group Destructive Fishing Watch Indonesia, told BenarNews.
“Those who are detained are usually the skippers, while crew members are sent home, but maybe the Vietnamese government isn't prepared to repatriate them. Indonesia also has limited funds, shelters and interpreters,” Abdi said.
Fishermen Ho told RFA that he and his fellow fishermen had not been taken home because the Vietnamese Embassy in Indonesia had not issued them the necessary documentation. He also said that as of last week, there had been no flights to take them back.
RFA telephoned the Vietnamese Embassy in Indonesia for more information but no one answered the calls.
Fisherman Doan Van Nhieu told RFA that he hoped a social media campaign would help highlight their plight.
“We mostly are very poor, our children have not yet grown up and depend completely on our income from fishing. We wish relevant agencies could raise concern about our situation and take us home as soon as possible,” said Doan, who said he was detained in Indonesia 10 months earlier.
Ho also alleged that conditions in the detention center were abysmal.
“We have being suffered a miserable life in this detention center, some days we had to eat uncooked rice and other days had stale rice. If we want to have a good meal we have to buy it at canteen,” Ho said.
The ministry’s Didik denied this allegation.
“We need to inform you that all crew members are in good health and are being treated appropriately in accordance with applicable regulations,” Didik told BenarNews.
Separately, several Lao fishermen told RFA that 463 of them were stuck in Pahang state in peninsular Malaysia after fishing work wrapped up in November.
The fishermen said their homeward trip was delayed after Vientiane’s Embassy in Kuala Lumpur took control of their travel plans, which were already complicated, with the Thai-Malaysia border closed due to the pandemic.
The men, who had already agreed to pay more than $400 each to a Malaysian travel agency to arrange flights home, were then obliged to pay about $100 more to get on a charter flight home, they said. But the flights promised by the embassy were repeatedly postponed.
“The embassy told us that we would fly back at the end of November,” a fisherman, who declined to be named, told RFA.
“We can’t wait any longer. The flights have been postponed three times. We can’t count on the embassy anymore,” the fisherman said.
On Dec. 6, the Lao Embassy in Kuala Lumpur said that flights chartered for the end of November were postponed because the Laotian government had suspended incoming flights.
Two days later, about 20 Laotians were arrested in Thailand’s southern Songkhla province, according to Thai media reports. The fishermen in Pahang said those men were among hundreds of their compatriots who gave up waiting and illegally entered Thailand in hopes of taking the overland route back to Laos.
An individual at the Pahang Fisheries Department, who didn’t give his name because he isn’t authorized to speak to the media, told BenarNews the department had no information on foreign fishermen stranded in the state.
“These foreign nationals usually are hired as a crew to deep-sea fishing boats, which are allowed to conduct fishing activities in international water…The bases for these boats are in Pekan, Kuantan, and Rompin,” the source said, naming towns in Pahang.
“So far we did not receive any information about stranded foreign fishermen in Malaysia, especially Pahang,” the official said.
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