The Indonesian government is repatriating hundreds of Burmese fishing slaves now being housed at a care center in the eastern Indonesian port city of Ambon.

Many of the trafficked men are eager to go home, and government-sanctioned negotiations over back pay with the companies are ongoing.

Dozens of others, though, have already put down roots in Indonesia, and they aren’t so eager to leave.

“The most important thing,” 39-year-old Ani Imbran says, sliding a plate of steaming, deep-fried bananas across the floor toward her four Burmese guests, “is that everyone knows my door is open.”

Two of the men have been staying at Ani’s house in Shark village — a Muslim enclave in northern Ambon, the largest city in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia — for weeks, the others for much longer.

All four, however, are among the dozens of escaped fishing slaves Ani has sheltered after months or even years of forced labor at sea, where their bodies were beaten, their dreams crushed into a mush of pain and regret. Like other so-called ibu piara, or adoptive mothers, scattered around the Malukus, Ani became these men’s best hope for survival after the brave, often perilous decision to flee their floating prisons.

She currently houses six Burmese men in her cramped, two-room home.

Sitting quietly, Umi, Ani’s 22-year-old daughter, glances over at 26-year-old Zaw Myo Win, who sits cross-legged on the other side of the room, cradling their nine-month-old baby boy.

Like thousands of other mainland Southeast Asians enslaved in Indonesian waters, in 2006 Zaw Myo Win was lured by recruiters with promises of lucrative work in Thailand, only to find himself forced onto a boat, where he was beaten, deprived of wages and kept on the edge of starvation for nearly a year.

Umi met him in this same house, where he would spend a few days of allotted respite between marathon fishing expeditions at sea. They married in November 2013, with Zaw Myo Win converting to Islam and taking the name Said (pronounced sy-EED).

Today, in the wake of an exposé by the Associated Press that laid bare the magnitude of trafficking in Indonesian waters, rescue missions have acquired a new urgency, and Burmese men like Said are finally being given the chance return to Myanmar through a government-backed repatriation campaign.

Faced with the prospect of leaving their new lives behind, however, not all of the runaway slaves are eager to leave.

From Benjina to Ambon



From Ani’s porch overlooking Ambon Bay, a dozen or so trawlers can be seen anchored together, cheek by jowl, in the sprawling port below.

They are among the 240 supposedly moored by a licensing freeze on foreign ships, part of the government’s war on illegal fishing, which maritime minister Susi Pudjiastuti said was costing Indonesia $25 billion a year. That moratorium lasted one year and ended late last week.

In response to the Associated Press report, 600 slaves on boats near the fisheries hub of Benjina in the southeastern Malukus were repatriated by the Indonesian government, with support from the International Organization of Migration (IOM), in a matter of weeks – 100 more than had been rescued in the last three years.

According to Paul Dillon, a project manager at the IOM’s office in Jakarta, the focus of the repatriation effort shifted to Ambon in June after the Cambodian embassy noted that hundreds of its nationals were stuck on the berthed vessels in port.

“But in the time between our arriving there and being granted access to the men by the ownership of those companies, a flight was chartered and several hundred Cambodian nationals were repatriated,” Dillon told Mongabay. “We strongly suspect that most if not all of them were also trafficking victims.”

The IOM is still waiting for permission from companies to evaluate the crews of about 160 of the ships. Of the 80-some vessels it has inspected, the IOM has only been authorized to assess the Burmese on board.

Nearly all the Burmese interviewed by the IOM — 379 in all — have been determined to be victims of trafficking (VOT).

Of that number, about half chose to use the IOM-run care facility at Ambon Port, where they are provided food and a place to sleep while awaiting identity papers, settlements for back pay and exit permits. The other half returned to the ships.

Good Samaritans

Though the Ambon repatriations are principally about rescuing vessel-bound VOTs, as word of the initiative spread, men like Said who had fled boats in the Malukus years before began to come out the shadows, drawn by the promise of the money owed them and the chance to go home.

Some of these overland arrivals came from as far away as Manado, a port city nearly 700 kilometers to the northwest on the island of Sulawesi. Others were already living in town.

Many of the men Mongabay met at the care center, however, had been taken in by people like Ani — ordinary citizens whose assistance was pivotal in a province where dysfunctional support systems and crooked police left them with few helping hands.

In a story typical of those at the center, three days after Myo Zaw Aung, 34, fled in Tual, a port town in Maluku’s Kei Islands, he was spotted by a man named Penne in the main market. Myo Zaw Aung was begging for food. He hadn’t eaten in days.

“He took pity on me and asked me if I would like to go to Saumlaki [a port town on the nearby island of Yamdena] with him,” said Myo Zaw Aung, who now goes by the Indonesian name Ako. “There were four others in the market with me, and he paid for our boat fares.”

In Saumlaki, Penne and his wife set Ako up with work and housed him for years. Now in Ambon, Ako said he still texts with his adopted family and would continue to stay in touch if he returned to Myanmar.

Kyaw Moe, or Ahmad, 34, another of the care center arrivals, said he worked for a decade as a seaweed farmer in Tual under the protection of his adoptive parents.

“On a good day I would make 70,000 rupiah [$5] and I would give it to them,” Ahmad said. “They gave me clothes and food and treated me like family.”

Hot on the trail

When victims of trafficking (VOTs) escape fishing boats in eastern Indonesian port towns like Saumlaki, Tual and Ambon, their first priority is often evading company-hired thugs, crew members and, sometimes, police officers — all of whom captains pay to stop them.Ko Win, a trafficking victim who was on the water for eight months, decided to flee in 2004 after the abuse he witnessed became too much to stomach.”When one of the members lost the use of his legs after being whipped by the captain with a shark’s tail, I told the captain we needed to get him medical care. When the captain refused, I decided I had to leave,” said Ko Win, who has since taken the Indonesian name Zeth.After fleeing in Tual, a port town in the southeast Malukus, he found out that one of his former crewmates, a Thai foreman, was looking for him. Friends told Zeth the man was out for blood. Behind the town’s central market, the two met face to face. Knives were drawn. “It was either him or me,” Zeth said. “I didn’t want to kill him, but I had no choice.” A few days later, Zeth was caught by police and imprisoned for murder. Upon his release years later, no one had the money to send him home. He has now been in eastern Indonesia shuffling between islands and cities for 11 years. Since meeting Said at the IOM care center, he has been staying at Ani’s. He hopes to be repatriated to Myanmar later this month.

Their kindness, he added, steered him to Islam. “Insyallah [God willing] — if I have a long life, I will come back to see them.”

Left to their own devices, finding a way home can be an exercise in futility for Burmese escapees stranded on Indonesian shores with no knowledge of the local language, no job and no means of contacting their birth family.

In one case, 39-year-old escapee Ko Win, who now goes by the name Zeth, managed to make it to the Myanmar embassy in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, thousands of kilometers from Ambon, on his own.

Officials told him he would have to check in at immigration before they could help him. Central immigration in Jakarta directed him to the regional branch in Maluku, where he first “entered” Indonesia. Zeth said officials there didn’t believe his story when he arrived the following week.

“Because of my hair and build, they didn’t believe I was Burmese,” he explained. “They said they thought I was a Javanese soldier.”

In the end, Zeth was forced to give up and go back to Manado.

Nominal citizens

In addition to food, shelter and work, “adoptive parents” often help trafficking victims secure KTPs — an all-important identity card required for all Indonesians of at least 17 years of age.

The KTP is necessary to obtain any kind of formal employment or to access welfare programs, among other services. Getting one, however, requires a birth certificate and an official address, both of which VOTs lack.

In practice, informal adoptions by Indonesians allow escapees to acquire KTPs, improving access to healthcare and granting a modicum of security from predatory cops. But trouble is never far away.

“A KTP can be enough to get what you need,” Ahmad said. “But it’s not enough if you get into trouble with the police.”

Just a few days before Mongabay visited Ambon Port, a Burmese VOT was accosted by cops on his way from the market to the care center, pants full of cash from a recent payout, according to IOM staff on the ground.

Only intervention by officials involved in the repatriation campaign saved the man from having to bribe.

Difficult decisions

Said reckons there are at least 30-40 KTP-holding Burmese in Saumlaki alone who have married local women and started families.

With the repatriations in full swing, these men now face a difficult decision: Will they uproot and return home? If they do, what will become of their Indonesian families?

Said himself is hoping to persuade Umi to join him with their baby boy in Myanmar. He has Ani’s blessing to do so.

Good cop, bad cop

Police who fleece trafficking victims for lacking identity papers are a constant source of anxiety for VOTs.When 20-year-old Soe Moe Tha, who has since taken the Indonesian name Efran, made his getaway in Merauke, a port town on the island of New Guinea, two years ago, he expected the authorities would keep him safe.At first the officers seemed to be on his side. They let him eat and stay overnight at the station while they figured out what to do. On the fourth night, however, masked men stormed his room and beat him savagely. Efran believes they were hired by the company that enslaved him.The next day, Efran was returned to his old captain. He was forced to work for another year before he managed to escape again in Ambon, where he steered clear of the cops.In Saumlaki, the police are more trustworthy, says Myo Zaw Aung, who goes by the Indonesian name Ako. Once, Ako said, he was beaten up by a junior officer after courting a woman the officer loved. After Ako reported the beating to the officer’s superior, the guilty party was made to run laps around the station with rocks tied to his back. Ako was allowed to watch. “In Saumlaki there is no problem with police,” Ako said. “They treat us just like Indonesians.” In Ambon, however, Said said he was under constant threat, with shakedowns common when police think migrants, illegal or otherwise, are holding cash.

“I want to bring them with me,” he said. “But it depends on Umi, and also if I have enough money [from the back pay negotiations] to buy them passports.”

“What’s important to me is Said is able to remember both of his families,” Ani said.

Ahmad said he personally knew 20 other Burmese trafficking victims who wanted their back pay but would not be coming to Ambon.

“Now that they have families and their KTPs, they don’t want to leave Indonesia,” he explained.

According to Fina Fitriany, an IOM staff member at the care center, the Ambon repatriations do not accommodate the relocation of spouses and children. All the Burmese trafficking victims who have entered into the negotiations, she said, would return to Myanmar alone.

Negotiation blues

Since June, just 163 of the 379 VOTs identified by the IOM have been sent home.

The main sticking point, according to Dillon, has been the negotiations over back pay. The fishing companies rarely agree to the sums demanded by the trafficking victims.

In general, the Burmese captives at the care center were promised monthly salaries of 9,000-10,000 Thai baht ($266) by their Thai recruiters — nearly 10 times the minimum wage in Myanmar until the wage reforms of August 2014.

Their real earnings, however, made a mockery of such an agreement.

Ako (Myo Zaw Aung), who left Thailand 12 years ago at 22 years of age, said he received just 600,000 rupiah ($44) for successive three-month trips — about 20 times less than what he was owed for a 90-day journey.

Despite the obstacles, Said said he was sticking to his guns.

Armed with detailed records of his four months-long expeditions, Said is demanding 70.2 million rupiah and said he won’t settle for less.

When asked if there was any redemption in holding his former captors to account, Ahmad (Kyaw Moe), shook his head.

“I just want my money,” he said. “I don’t want to go home empty-handed.”

On the horizon

On their own, the repatriation campaign might not do much to curb slavery in the Asia-Pacific, which has flourished in recent years in line with surging international demand for seafood.

The Labor Rights Promotion Network, a Bangkok-based NGO, estimates there could be as many as 3,000 more trafficked men still fishing in the Malukus.

With the expiration of the Indonesian licensing freeze, ships could soon start returning to those seas — and with them, crews full of slaves.

The back pay negotiations, Dillon stressed, should not be confused with justice, nor imagined as an effective deterrent to the criminal behavior.

“There is a view in some quarters that having paid these men part of their salaries there is no further need to pursue criminal investigations. We strongly disagree with that in part because it basically writes off the enslavement of thousands of men as the cost of doing business,” he told Mongabay.

“Only public censure, long jail terms and stiff fines combined with effective enforcement and a mobilized, vocal consumer base overseas that demands companies be accountable for the fisheries products they sell is going to make a real difference.”

What policy measures, if any, the Indonesian government will take remains to be seen.

But for dozens, if not hundreds, of Burmese trafficking victims who escaped captivity and found themselves in the Malukus, it was the kindness of strangers that became their saving grace.

“Without Ani,” Said says, striding the 50 meters back to the main road from her house and greeting neighbors he passes in fluent Indonesian, “I’m not sure how I would have made it.”