According to ITF, the parties that
would ordinarily take responsibility - the owner, flag state, or the nation of
ownership - have not stepped forward to help.
According to ITF, the UAE-based shipowner Middle
East Marine LLCd has had 17 abandonment cases since late 2022, in locations across South Asia. The
agency says that it has responded to abandonment claims aboard 18 of the firm's
ships from Bangladesh to India to Sri Lanka. The majority of the seafarers involved are from Myanmar, Indonesia and
India.
The affected crewmembers have
reported non-payment of wages, lack of food, dirty water, refusal of access to
health care, and withholding of passports and medication. These are typical
abuses associated with forced labor, routinely found in corners of
the fishing industry but less often encountered in commercial shipping.
ITF - which handles dozens of abandonment cases every year - called it the
"worst case of serial seafarer abandonment ever seen."
Middle East Marine is an established
firm based in the UAE. It says that it provides a wide diversity of commercial
services, including chartering, project cargo, container repositioning, salvage
& towage, bunkering, armed private security, crewing, shipmanagement, and
small craft chartering. It has four locations in the UAE and India.
"My salary hasn’t been paid for more than
three months – but there are some crew members unpaid for as long as seven
months," one crewmember told ITF. "The company did not supply provisions and
fresh water – sometimes we were just fishing for survival. All crew members are
getting depressed, and our families are getting in debt to survive."
The Maritime Labor Convention
requires twice-monthly payment of wages. After
non-payment for two months or deprivation of food and water, a vessel is
considered abandoned. This internationally-recognized category for serious
mistreatment of seafarers - who often earn no more than a few dollars an hour,
even when paid - should trigger action by the flag state and the insurer,
according to ITF. In this case, however, this system appears to have hit a
dead end. ITF says that authorities in the UAE have not taken action on this
crew abandonment case - in keeping with what labor advocates call a light touch
on employment rights in the region's second-wealthiest economy.
"It’s hard to comprehend how a
company registered in the UAE can behave like this with impunity. Middle East Marine is a stain on the
global maritime industry," said Steve Trowsdale, ITF's Inspectorate
Coordinator.
According to ITF, Middle East's flag
state regulator of choice - a Greek-administered flag that markets a
customer-centric digital service - has not responded once to inquiries
about the years-long list of human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated by its
client.
"It's been shocking to see
seafarers facing such extreme exploitation, dangerous working conditions and
limited rights. No pay, inadequate living conditions, lack of legal
protections, and restricted freedom of movement – it's akin to modern-day
indentured servitude," said Sandra Bernal, ITF's Network Coordinator Asia
Pacific Region.
The same
flag state has previously been identified as a registry of
choice for sanctioned North Korean operators, who need the cover of a certain
type of flag administration in order to mask sanctions evasion. "Put
simply, North Korean smuggling networks know that these registries are not
monitoring the vessels which sail under their flag," former UN sanctions
enforcement expert Hugh Griffiths told AFP last year. The registry says that it has recently increased its
sanctions-enforcement efforts.