Was Your Seafood Caught By Slaves? AP Uncovers Unsavory Trade

[Unbeliever]

And most people thought slavery was over!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2015/03/27/395589154/was-your-seafood-caught-by-slaves-ap-uncovers-unsavory-trade

Some of the seafood that winds up in American grocery stores, in restaurants, even in cat food may have been caught by Burmese slaves. That's the conclusion of a yearlong investigation by The Associated Press.

The AP discovered and interviewed dozens of men being held against their will on Benjina, a remote Indonesian island, which serves as the base for a trawler fleet that fishes in the area.

AP correspondent Martha Mendoza was one of the lead reporters for the investigation. The men AP found unloading seafood in Benjina were mostly from Myanmar, also known as Burma. When they realized one of the AP reporters spoke Burmese, "they began calling out, asking for help, and explaining that they were trapped and that they were being beaten and that they were enslaved," Mendoza tells NPR's Renee Montagne.

I heard about this on NPR, and found it very disturbing. Why don't we have a war on slavery instead of a war on drugs? All that money and effort wasted for what?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

With the war on drugs every cop, judge, prosecutor, prison guard and school principal can get their fingers in the big money drug war giveaway cookie jar, but not so with fishing fleet slaves on the other side of the planet. The drug war has been a multi trillion dollar bonanza for years and it isn't about to go away.

[kilodelta]

It's alright as long as the Indonesians are following the Biblical rules for slave ownership.

But seriously, this isn't the only Asian country that does stuff like this. South Korea gets people from poorer Asian countries to come over to do labor. When they arrive, their passports are taken so that they can't leave the country. They are then worked for about 12 hours almost every day. They are told they have a debt and can only get back if they earn enough. Their rate of pay doesn't allow them to really make enough to get back for years and by the end of it, they're no better off when they started. Human trafficking is a major problem that many countries only do token efforts as a show that they are trying to correct the problem. There are also the foreign "juicy girls" in Japan and South Korea... probably other places as well.

[stromboli]

I'm buying clothes from Walmart made by old Chinese women chained to sewing machines, so why should I be bothered with slave seafood? You silly people obsess too much.

[kilodelta]

Because we eat seafood and only chew on our clothes.

[aitm]

yeah, you should read about the slave trade in Dubai, the whole place is being built by slaves...

[Mike Cl]

And most people thought slavery was over!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2015/03/27/395589154/was-your-seafood-caught-by-slaves-ap-uncovers-unsavory-trade

I heard about this on NPR, and found it very disturbing. Why don't we have a war on slavery instead of a war on drugs? All that money and effort wasted for what?

Nope--slavery has never been 'over' and it won't be any time soon.