Taipei, Taiwan
CNN
 — 

Silwanus Tangkotta was working aboard a Taiwanese fishing boat in the remote Pacific last year, when a heavy wave slammed a rolling metal door onto his hand, crushing his middle and ring fingers.

The Indonesian migrant fisherman needed medical attention, but the captain refused to return to port, saying they hadn’t caught enough fish to justify the trip. For over a month, Tangkotta endured the searing pain, forced to wrap the wound in tape and pick at exposed bone with a toothpick to prevent infection.

“I did whatever I could… I took nail clippers and toothpicks to destroy the protruding bones,” he told CNN. “I thought if I didn’t pull out the bone, the infection would continue and my fingers would rub.”

Tangkotta’s ordeal, while harrowing, is far from an isolated incident.

Taiwan operates the world’s second-largest distant-water fishing fleet — supplying tuna, squid and other seafood to supermarkets across the world, including the US and Europe.

The self-governing island is widely promoted as a beacon of liberalism and human rights in Asia, being a vibrant democracy with a relatively strong record on equality – for example, being one of only three Asian jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal.

But its treatment of migrant workers has come under growing international scrutiny, raising questions about its commitment to these values.

Since 2020, the US Department of Labor has listed Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry as showing signs of forced labor, highlighting issues such as deceptive recruitment, withheld wages, physical violence and extreme working hours.

In a statement to CNN, Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency said the US Department of Labor’s reports were based on “unverified” information provided by NGOs, and described migrant fishermen as “important partners” in Taiwan’s fishing industry.

The agency said Taiwan was “one of the few” jurisdictions to “have implemented a concrete action plan on fisheries and human rights.”

Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor said it was working with the fisheries agency “to pragmatically safeguard the rights of distant-water migrant fishermen and to assist in enhancing relevant protection measures.”

Yet migrant workers like Tangkotta still face severe abuse, often without significant public attention, in part because they remain politically and socially marginalized.

Hailing from the Indonesian capital Jakarta, Tangkotta, now 38, began working on Taiwanese vessels in 2019, attracted by promises of better pay to support his family. In Indonesia, fishermen often earn less than $100 a month, an amount dwarfed by Taiwan’s minimum of $550.

But the reality was harsher than he expected. Aboard a medium-sized fishing vessel, Tangkotta spent up to four months at a time in the unforgiving Pacific, working 18-hour shifts with only brief rests in between. While the boat was designed for 23 crew members, only 16 were on board. Food was insufficient and often ran out quickly, he said.

But a bigger problem was extreme isolation. The boat had no internet, cutting the crew off from their families and preventing them from seeking help.

That isolation became critical when Tangkotta was seriously injured. The boat was near the Solomon Islands, about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) from Taiwan, when the door crushed his fingers. With no way to call for help, he had no choice but to remain on board while the captain prioritized profits. When he was eventually transferred to another vessel weeks later, it too continued fishing rather than heading to port.

“I felt helpless, and the pain made it hard to sleep,” he said. “I was disappointed because the only thing on my mind was that I needed to go to land as quickly as possible.”

A month later, he was hospitalized in Taiwan with two lost fingers, but was immediately handed a termination letter – not because of the injury, the company said, but because his position had ended. As a result, he was denied compensation.

The Fisheries Agency said it received a report from the fishing vessel about Tangkotta’s case, and he received treatment from the captain throughout the trip.

“The case was reported to a shore-based doctor, who assessed that there was no immediate danger,” it said. “The captain continued to provide care for Mr. Tangkotta based on the doctor’s advice.”

CNN has reached out to Tangkotta’s previous employer and Indonesia’s representative office in Taipei for comment.

Taiwan’s distant-water fishing industry depends on more than 20,000 Indonesian and Filipino workers, but political will to protect their rights is lacking, said Allison Lee, co-founder of the Yilan Migrant Fishermen Union, which is based in a fishing port in northeastern Taiwan.

“Even though the US has labeled Taiwan’s fishing industry since 2020, the government responded with rhetoric but very little was changed,” she said, adding that many workers were promised decent salaries but faced overwork and delayed wages.

Unlike most migrant workers in Taiwan, distant-water fishermen operate under a different set of rules and are excluded from Taiwan’s Labor Standards Act, meaning they lack protections for overtime pay and health insurance that others are entitled to.

“There’s a very serious problem with overwork,” Lee added. “Some migrant workers were told there will be 10 crew members on board, but only four were on board and they had to work very long hours.”

Even basic safety measures were ignored, she said, with some told not to wear life jackets because they “got in the way” of their work.

In 2023, 10 Indonesian crew members aboard the You Fu vessel were owed 15 months of wages, while they were out at sea with no way to contact families or verify payments, according to Taiwan’s official Central News Agency. The fishermen were forced to eat bait with instant noodles due to food shortages, and faced routine verbal abuse, it reported, adding the salaries were eventually settled after the owner came under mounting pressure from media coverage.

Wage theft is one of the most widespread problems faced by migrant fishermen, said Achmad Mudzakir, a fisherman who serves as the leader of FOSPI, a Taiwan-based NGO that supports other crew members.

His organization regularly receives complaints about unpaid wages — with devastating consequences for families. “It is kind of painful because when we work hard at sea, we face high risks and we put our lives at stake. The late payments impact our families back home,” he said.

One solution, Mudzakir said, is requiring WiFi access for all migrant fishermen, because it would allow them to check their pay and seek help from NGOs, even from the middle of the ocean.

Regulations preventing migrant workers from switching jobs without returning to their home country or paying new agency fees should be scrapped, he added, because they discourage workers from reporting abuse for fear of dismissal and incurring debt.

In response to its inclusion on the US forced labor list, Taiwan’s Fisheries Agency said it has introduced reforms since 2022 – including raising minimum wages, installing CCTV on boats, and hiring new inspectors to improve working conditions. But activists like Lee criticized the measures as cosmetic, saying they were aimed at improving Taiwan’s image rather than addressing the root causes of forced labor.

Adrian Dogdodo Basar, a former Indonesian migrant fisherman, echoed calls for reform after seeing one of his closest friends die aboard a Taiwanese fishing vessel in 2023.

While working in the Pacific Ocean, his friend fell seriously ill with swollen legs and stomach pain. Adrian said the captain refused pleas to return to port, citing high costs, and offered only expired medicine. After several months – before the vessel returned – his friend died.

Adrian said he was punished with food deprivation and threats of salary deductions when he demanded the body be returned home immediately. “We asked him to just go to the nearest port to send the body home, but the captain denied us,” he said. “When I started protesting, I was not given any food.”

Like other migrant fishermen, Adrian paid more than US$2,000 in agency fees to secure the job – a debt that prevented other colleagues from speaking out, for fear of losing their work.

While these abuses may seem distant, Taiwan is the world’s seventh-largest seafood exporter, with its catch ending up on dining tables around the globe – meaning seafood on supermarket shelves may have been caught by exploited workers.

“American consumers are still at significant risk of consuming seafood tainted by modern slavery,” said Sari Heidenreich, Greenpeace USA’s senior human rights adviser. “It is essential for companies importing seafood from Taiwan to scrutinize their supply chains much more rigorously.”

Earlier this year, four Indonesian fishermen filed a landmark federal lawsuit against US canned-food giant Bumble Bee Foods, which is owned by Taiwanese seafood conglomerate FCF Co, alleging that the tuna giant “knowingly benefitted” from forced labor, debt bondage and other abuses in its supply chain. It is the first known case of fishing boat slavery brought against a US seafood company, Agnieszka Fryszman, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, told CNN.

As for Silwanus, who now relies on friends and relatives, he hopes no one else has to endure what he did.

“I hope that all my friends – all my brothers – who work aboard Taiwanese vessels receive proper treatment if they are injured at sea,” he said.

“I hope this only happens to me, and not again to other fishers.

CNN
 — 

An official report on the world’s deadliest aviation accident in a decade has answered one key question – but raised others.

Air India flight AI171 had barely left the runway last month when it lost momentum and crashed in a densely populated area of India’s western city of Ahmedabad, killing all but one of the 242 people on board and 19 others on the ground.

Now, a preliminary report by India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) has revealed that fuel supply to both engines was cut in the crucial minutes as the aircraft was ascending.

The plane’s “black box,” its flight data recorder, showed that the aircraft had reached an airspeed of 180 knots when both engines’ fuel switches were “transitioned from RUN to CUTOFF position one,” the report says. The switches were flipped within a second of each other, halting the flow of fuel.

On an audio recording from the black box, mentioned in the report, one of the pilots is heard asking the other why he flipped the switches. The other pilot responds that he did not do so. The report does not specify who was the pilot and who was the co-pilot in the dialogue.

Seconds later, the switches on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner were flipped the other way to turn the fuel supply back on. Both engines were able to relight, and one began to “progress to recovery,” the report said, but it was too late to stop the plane’s gut-wrenching descent.

The report reveals the fundamental reason why the jet crashed, but much remains unexplained.

The findings do not make clear how the fuel switches were flipped to the cutoff position during the flight, whether it was deliberate, accidental or if a technical fault was responsible.

On Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners, the fuel switches are between the two pilots’ seats, immediately behind the plane’s throttle levers. They are protected on the sides by a metal bar.

The switches require an operator to physically lift the switch handle up and over a detent – a catch – as they are deliberately designed so they can’t be knocked accidentally.

Geoffrey Dell, an air safety specialist who has conducted numerous aircraft accident investigations, finds it hard to see how both switches could have been flipped in error.

“It’s at least a two-action process for each one,” he told CNN. “You’ve got to pull the switch out towards you and then push it down. It’s not the sort of thing you can do inadvertently.”

According to Dell, it would be “bizarre” for a pilot to deliberately cut fuel to both engines immediately after take-off.

There is “no scenario on the planet where you’d do that immediately after lift-off,” he said.

Pointing to the fact that both engine switches were flipped within a second of each other, Dell noted: “That’s the sort of thing you do when you park the airplane at the end of the flight… You plug into the terminal and shut the engines down.”

One possibility the report raises relates to an information bulletin issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration in 2018 about “the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature.” But, given that this was not considered an unsafe condition, Air India did not carry out inspections.

Dell said an aircraft’s flight data recorder should help explain how the fuel switches were flipped in each case. However, India’s AAIB has not released a full transcript of the conversation between the two pilots. Without it, Dell says it’s difficult to understand what happened.

Former pilot Ehsan Khalid also believes that the report’s findings raised questions over the position of the vital engine fuel switches, which, he said, should be clarified by the investigators.

Speaking to Reuters, Khalid warned against pinning the blame on the pilots. “The AAIB report to me is only conclusive to say that the accident happened because both engines lost power.”

He added: “The pilots were aware that the aircraft engine power has been lost, and pilots also were aware that they did not do any action to cause this.”

A full report is not due for months and India’s Civil Aviation Minister, Ram Mohan Naidu, said: “Let’s not jump to any conclusions at this stage.”

The Air India jet took off from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in India’s western state of Gujarat on June 12, bound for London Gatwick.

Air India had said 242 passengers and crew members were on board. That included 169 Indian nationals, 53 Britons, seven Portuguese and one Canadian. Everyone on board was killed, except for one passenger.

The 19 people on the ground were killed when the plane crashed into the BJ Medical College and Hospital hostel.

Air India has acknowledged that it has received the report and said it will continue cooperating with authorities in the investigation.

CNN
 — 

For most world leaders, tariff letters from US President Donald Trump mean a big headache. But for one Southeast Asian general, the communique is being spun as welcome recognition of the embattled, isolated and reviled junta he leads.

Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, head of the military that seized power in Myanmar in 2021 after ousting a democratically elected government, said it was he who had the “honor” of receiving of Trump’s letter sent on Monday announcing new tariffs, state media Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Friday.

The letter, which stated the United States would be imposing a new tariff rate of 40 percent on Myanmar’s exports to the US starting August 1, was received with “sincere appreciation,” the newspaper said.

The United States and most Western countries have not recognized the junta as the legitimate government of Myanmar, also known as Burma.

The military’s power grab sparked a catastrophic civil war now in its fifth year, with pro-democracy fighters and ethnic rebel groups battling the military across swaths of the country. The United Nations and other rights groups have accused the military of war crimes as it battles to cling to power.

The US, the United Kingdom and the European Union have all sanctioned the military and sought to limit contact with its representatives on the world stage. Washington and most Western capitals no longer station fully accredited ambassadors in Myanmar, a diplomatic snub the ruling generals have long chafed at.

But this week’s letter was spun as an “encouraging invitation to continue participating in the extraordinary Economy of the United States,” Min Aung Hlaing was quoted as saying, adding a high-level negotiation team could be sent “as quickly as possible to the US to discuss with the relevant authorities,” if needed.

CNN has reached out to the US embassy in Myanmar for details on how the letter was delivered and for comment on whether it signals a change in Washington’s stance on the junta.

Min Aung Hlaing also asked that Washington consider lifting and easing economic sanctions on Myanmar, “as they hinder the shared interests and prosperity of both countries and their peoples,” he was quoted as saying.

The general – who led Myanmar’s military in 2017, when the United States said it committed genocide against the Rohingya minority – also took the chance to heap praise on Trump.

He hailed his “strong leadership in guiding his country towards national prosperity with the spirit of a true patriot, as well as continued efforts to promote peace on the global stage,” the Global New Light said.

Min Aung Hlaing also thanked Trump for “regulating broadcasting agencies and funds, which have sometimes exacerbated the existing conflicts” – an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s funding cuts to US outlets such as Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.

Both outlets have long been popular across Myanmar for their independent reporting, and have become even more vital following the junta’s crackdown on the free press.

Min Aung Hlaing sought to appeal to a longstanding Trump grievance – his long-debunked claims of massive election fraud in the 2020 election won by former President Joe Biden.

“Similar to the challenges the President encountered during the 2020 election of the United States, Myanmar also experienced major electoral fraud and significant irregularities,” he was quoted as saying.

The election he was referring to in Myanmar was won resoundingly by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party, which won a second term at the expense of the military’s proxy party.

International observers at the time concluded the election was largely free and fair but the military soon began making unsubstantiated claims of massive fraud. Weeks later, it launched its coup, ending a 10-year experiment with democracy and plunging Myanmar into turmoil.

Suu Kyi has been in military custody since, and is serving a 27-year jail sentence following a closed-door trial that critics say was a sham and designed to remove the popular leader and longtime foe of the military from political life.