Secret slave contracts
In 2014 and 2015, Latvian, Lithuanian and Russian vessels rushed to Båtsfjord. The goal was to make billions of the snow crab - the new gold in the Barents Sea. But the Russian seamen ended up calling Båtsfjord «pirate port».
By: Siri Gedde-Dahl, Gunnar Thorenfeldt, Leif Stang, Ola Strømman and Hans Arne Vedlog (photo), translation: Boris Kochetkov
This article is published in cooperation with Dagbladet, which has published a series of articles about this issue in Norwegian.
BÅTSFJORD / ODESSA / OSLO (Dagbladet): 18-hour workday and six hours of rest. For just a little over 4000 Norwegian kroner and a carton of cigarettes a month. Such are the brutal conditions in employment contracts of Indonesian seamen on a number of snow crab boats in Båtsfjord, northern Norway. Dagbladet has access to the contracts.
- It was painful to see what it was like for the Indonesians. Some of the people I spoke to had worked aboard the boat for over two years, says a Ukrainian sailor Dagbladet met in Odessa. He worked on one of the Båtsfjord-based boats owned by the Latvian company Baltjura-serviss.
«It was painful to see what it was like for the Indonesians. Some of the people I spoke to had worked aboard the boat for over two years»Ukrainian sailor
He does not dare to have his name and photo published, but he has shown us his own employment contract, a seaman’s visa and cell phone photos of the crab vessel.
Irina Kravchenko, the widow of Dmitry Kravchenko, who disappeared at sea from the Baltjura-serviss boat «Kalmar» on September 4, says:
- My husband told me that the Indonesian seamen were treated as slaves. They had to wear old clothes until they almost fell off. They did not get enough food and they starved. Even though they had to work more than the rest of the crew, they earned a lot less than the others. And often they did not even get the agreed wages.
THE UNKNOWN HELL: Dagbladet reveals everyday life on board snow crab boats that operated from Båtsfjord. Video: Øistein Norum Monsen and Gunnar Thorenfeldt. Edit: Per Ervland
As Dagbladet Magasinet wrote earlier, she cannot get in touch with her deceased husband’s employer, which was not the ship owner but a crewing company in Seychelles with unknown owners. The Batljura-serviss snow crabbing fleet in Båtsfjord also included the vessels «Valka», «Dubna» and «Memele».
Indonesians at the bottom
While Irina’s Ukrainian husband was properly paid, the situation was different for the Indonesians who had been recruited to work for this and other fishing companies in Båtsfjord. According to several sources, the Indonesian seamen also had to work all week without a day off. This means that their hourly wage was 8-9 kroner.
They were flown from Jakarta to Dubai, from Dubai to Oslo, from Oslo to Alta, from Alta to Båtsfjord. There they boarded crab boats.
According to information Dagbladet has received, there are reportedly about 50 Indonesians who were brought to Båtsfjord to work on various boats under such contracts.
Norway’s most well-known human trafficking lawyer, prosecutor Rudolf Christoffersen, has a very strong reaction to the content of the contract.
- Dagbladet’s information indicates that there may be a violation of human trafficking law, says Christoffersen
