Antonio Prokschaby Antonio Prokscha
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Photo Credit: Peter Ko/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 3.0
Taiwan operates the world’s second-largest distant-water fishing fleet, with about 1,100 vessels sailing in international waters. Behind this economic success lies a stark reality that labour rights organisations have documented for years: the systematic exploitation of migrant workers who fall outside the protection of Taiwan’s labour laws.
FOR FIFTEEN MONTHS, the Indonesian crew of the You Fu lived in conditions that meet nearly every definition of forced labor. Working 18-20-hour days, sleeping in pest-infested quarters. Bottled water frequently ran out. Food deliveries failed to arrive. Some weeks, they survived on fish bait and instant noodles. For the entire voyage, they were cut off from the outside world, with no Wi-Fi and no way to contact families. One crew member learned of his father’s death only after buying a SIM card during a brief port call in Samoa.
For all the time on board, the workers received not a single month of pay. After the men finally stepped ashore in Taiwan and demanded their wages, brokers offered partial payment, but only if they signed on for another voyage. The crew refused. To draw attention to their situation, they held a press conference in Taipei. Shortly before the event, the Fisheries Agency and the shipowner promised to pay the fishermen’s wages, which they received in full following the conference.
For Yi Hsiang of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), who has spent years documenting abuses in the fishing sector, the revelations of this case only confirm a reality long known to human rights organisations. “It’s been like this for decades,” he says.
In the known Fuh Sheng No. 11 case in 2018, inspectors found twenty-two-hour workdays, violence and crews earning as little as fifty dollars a month. It created a public outcry and should have triggered sweeping reform, Yi argues. Instead Taiwan’s government has continued to shield the industry from real accountability.
A Pattern, Not an Anomaly
THE NEWLY RELEASED Silenced Voices report, a collaboration between Human Rights Now, a Japanese NGO, and TAHR, traces abuses from Indonesian recruitment villages to Taiwanese ports and across the Pacific, where crews labor on longliners for months without landfall.
Building on similar investigations into South Korean vessels, the report interviewed dozens of workers whose accounts mirror almost every indicator of forced labor defined by the International Labour Organization: withheld wages, confiscated passports, deception about contract terms, and in some cases less than four hours of rest per day.
The You Fu case illustrates the systemic nature of the problem. According to the report, the crew were promised six-month contracts but found themselves trapped for more than a year in American Samoan waters. Passports were confiscated immediately after boarding, and crew were told wages would be remitted monthly. In reality, no money ever reached their families.
Yi says this pattern has been documented repeatedly. “They were completely isolated. No Wi-Fi, no communication, no salary. If your documents are taken and you’re stuck at sea for more than a year, you have no choice.”
Unions Under Pressure
THE RECRUITMENT and organization of migrant fishers is often informal and community-based, which makes them even more vulnerable. One of the few protective structures that exist in Taiwan is the Indonesian fishermen’s organization FOSPI-PMFU (Forum Silaturahmi Pelaut Indonesia – Pingtung Migrant Fishers Union).
It began simply as a social and religious community in the port of Donggang. Migrant fishers, most of them Muslim, pooled donations to build a mosque. Over time, as cases of unpaid wages, harassment and unexplained deaths accumulated, FOSPI began evolving into a labor union.
“FOSPI started as a community and religious group”, Yi recalls. “But more and more people came to them with labour disputes. So they decided to form a trade union.”
That decision triggered a conflict emblematic of the power imbalance in the sector. As FOSPI sought formal registration in 2023, a Taiwanese shipowner attempted to interfere, Yi says, even trying to seize control of the union’s registration documents and official stamp. “He tried to cheat them and control everything. They had to take the union back.” Only this year did FOSPI finally elect its own leadership and become fully independent.
Two-Tier System
THESE DYNAMICS reflect a broader struggle. Taiwan’s distant-water fishing workforce is overwhelmingly Indonesian, with smaller numbers from the Philippines and other South and Southeast Asian countries. But those who are recruited overseas fall outside Taiwan’s labor laws, under a separate regulatory framework created by the Fisheries Agency. Their contracts, usually signed before arrival, are not covered by the protections guaranteed to onshore workers.
This two-tier system has been criticized for years by domestic as well as international NGOs, and caused protests. Yet it remains intact, and Yi argues that this structural separation is precisely what enables abuse.
“There is only one article in the regulation about salary, rest hours, insurance,” he says. “It’s far below basic labor standards.”
The practical implications are severe. Onshore workers in Taiwan, for example, are entitled to a monthly minimum wage of approximately NT$27,470 (around US$860). Migrant fishers recruited overseas often earn only a fraction of that amount. In 2022, the Fisheries Agency increased the minimum monthly pay for migrant distant-water fishers to US$550. In practice, however, they often receive less. Moreover, they have no guaranteed rest periods, no effective grievance mechanisms and limited recourse if their contracts are violated.
Yi believes the slow pace of reform reflects the fishing lobby’s political influence. “The industry is very powerful. They tell the government: if you don’t protect us, we won’t support you.”
External Pressure, Limited Impact
REGULATORY CHANGES in Taiwan are usually driven more by international pressure than by domestic political will. In 2015, the European Union issued a “yellow card” over illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing by Taiwanese companies, threatening access to European markets. The warning was lifted in 2019 after Taiwan implemented reforms, including stricter vessel monitoring and enhanced port inspections.
More recently, the United States Department of Labor has listed Taiwan multiple times in its reports on forced and child labor in global supply chains, specifically citing abuses in the fishing industry.
Yet the Silenced Voices report argues that these regulatory adjustments have done little to address the root causes of exploitation. Inspections remain infrequent and often ineffective. Complaints are difficult to file from the middle of the ocean. And the industry’s practice of transshipment at sea, transferring fish from one vessel to another without docking, keeps crucial parts of the supply chain hidden from oversight.
Over 100 Deaths Per Year
MEANWHILE, the human toll is rising. The Indonesian government office in Taiwan reported 104 deaths of Indonesian workers on Taiwanese vessels in 2024 alone. “Every time I visit FOSPI-PMFU in Donggang or have an online meeting with them, they are always dealing with cases of their members dying or being injured at sea,” Yi says.
Taiwanese society has gradually become more aware of these stories. The work of NGOs, media reports, as well as the successful 2023 television drama “Port of Lies”, have helped to raise awareness of the experiences of migrant fishers. Yet, Yi says that awareness has not translated into sustained political pressure: “People are more aware now, yes. But action is still limited.”
Meanwhile, the Fisheries Agency keeps promoting only positive stories, such as videos of visitors touring Taiwanese vessels and highlighting supposedly good working conditions, while widespread reports of migrant worker abuse remain largely unaddressed.
The Silenced Voices report concludes that the most urgent reform is the abolition of the two-tier system, a step the industry fiercely opposes because it would require paying migrant workers Taiwan’s minimum wage and providing full legal protections. Yi puts it bluntly: “We must abolish the two-tier system. Without that, nothing will change.”
For the former crew of the You Fu, the recognition of their case as human trafficking has given them temporary protection and the right to work in Taiwan while authorities investigate. Some have found jobs in factories. Others remain in shelters and wait for a settlement that may or may not come. Their ordeal is far from over.
What their stories reveal, however, is not an isolated scandal but a structural problem, one that reaches from the docks of Kaohsiung to Japanese supermarkets and the global companies that profit from the tuna trade.
As Yi warns, the choice now lies with Taiwan’s government: whether to continue prioritizing industry interests, or to confront the exploitation that has flourished, unchallenged, for years.
“Until we change the system,” he says, “the abuses will continue.”