A rusted cage on a rainy tropical island at night with a fishing trawler anchored offshore
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The Slaves of Benjina: The Men Locked in a Cage to Catch the Fish in Your Freezer

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Thin men grip the rusted bars of a cage on a rainy night on a tropical island

In early 2015, reporters on a remote Indonesian island called Benjina found men locked in a cage.

They were not criminals. They were fishermen. The rusted, barred cells sat inside a fishing company’s compound, and the men held there were the ones considered most likely to run away. (Associated Press)

A shopper reaches for cat food in a supermarket freezer whose glass reflects a fishing trawler on a stormy sea

The fish those men caught did not stay on the island. The Associated Press traced it to suppliers serving major American supermarkets and to some of the best-known cat food brands in the United States.

This is the true story of the slaves of Benjina: how the seafood got from that cage to a freezer aisle, how reporters followed it, and what happened to one man who spent 22 years trying to get home.

A broker's hand slides banknotes toward a mother by lamplight while her son stands in the doorway at night

His name is Myint Naing. In 1993 he was 18, living in a village in southern Myanmar, when a broker came promising good jobs across the border in Thailand. His family badly needed money. His mother finally agreed. He left without saying goodbye to her. (AP via Arab News)

The trap

A guard lifts the tarp of a truck at night to reveal frightened young men packed inside

Men like him were moved through Thailand, often with fake papers, and passed from broker to broker. Most had no idea where they were really going.

Young men carrying bags walk up a gangplank onto a rusted trawler at night as a captain watches from the deck

They were put on fishing boats bound for Indonesian waters. Once the coastline disappeared, there was no way to leave.

Exhausted fishermen haul a heavy net onto a trawler deck during a violent storm at night

Former workers described shifts of 20 to 22 hours. Dirty water to drink. A few mouthfuls of rice and curry a day. Most were paid almost nothing.

Life on the boats

A captain raises a long stingray tail like a whip over flinching crew on a dark deck

Men who were too slow, or who complained, said they were beaten with the tails of stingrays.

A fisherman stands in front of an open ship freezer as icy fog pours out over stacked crates of fish

Some did not survive. One former worker told the AP that bodies used to be thrown overboard. Later, he said, they were kept in the ship’s freezers, alongside the fish.

A young fisherman pleads with open hands in a ship's cabin as the captain stands holding a heavy tool

In 1996, Myint Naing asked to go home. He was hit on the head. That night, he ran.

Rotting wooden grave markers lean in the mud of a rainy jungle clearing

On Benjina, reporters later found a crude cemetery with more than 60 graves. Some of the markers carried fake names: the false identities the men had been given to work on the boats.

Escape

A man's hands work a thin piece of metal into a padlock chaining his ankle to a ship's rail under moonlight

A local family took him in, and he worked on their farm for about five years. In 2001 he went back to sea, and after nine months his captain abandoned the crew. Chained to the boat, Myint picked the lock with a small scrap of metal.

A lone swimmer crosses a dark sea at night toward a jungle shoreline under a crescent moon

After midnight he slipped into the water and swam for the shore.

A gaunt man crouches under giant leaves in a jungle at night as searchers with flashlights pass in the distance

He hid in the jungle, alone, for years. He was afraid that police would hand him back to the captains, and too afraid to contact his own country’s embassy. Eventually he moved to another island and grew his own vegetables. He was still not free to go home.

Following the fish

Two reporters in a small boat shout up at men leaning over the rail of a towering rusted trawler at night

Meanwhile, a team of AP reporters spent more than a year on the story. They interviewed more than 40 current and former slaves, sometimes by pulling up beside fishing boats and shouting questions across the water. (IRE)

A hand holds a small camera against a gap in a wooden wall, filming a barred cage across a dark compound

They slipped a camera to a migrant worker on the island so he could film what reporters could not reach.

A reporter at a desk late at night studies a monitor showing a ship's route across a dark sea

Using ship-tracking tools and satellite images, they followed a refrigerated cargo ship loaded with fish from Benjina for 15 days, all the way to the Thai port of Samut Sakhon.

Reporters watch from inside a car as refrigerated trucks are loaded at a rainy port at night

Over four nights they watched the catch loaded onto more than 150 trucks, then followed the trucks to factories and cold-storage plants. U.S. customs records showed where the seafood went next: into the supply chains of American companies. (Associated Press)

Free

Hundreds of men carrying bags stream down a dock at sunrise toward waiting government ships

After the stories ran in March 2015, Indonesian officials moved in. Over the following months, more than 2,000 enslaved fishermen were rescued. (Associated Press)

A man kneels in a village road at sunset as an elderly woman runs toward him with open arms

Myint Naing was one of the men who came home. Indonesian officials found him and brought him back to join hundreds of other freed men. He flew to Yangon and went home to his village, 22 years after he left.

His sister reached him first. “Brother, it’s so good that you are back!” she sobbed. Minutes later his mother ran down the path toward him. He fell to the ground, and she held him and stroked his head. (AP via Arab News)

A shopper's hand hovers over a seafood case whose frosted glass reflects hands gripping iron bars

The AP series won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. (The Pulitzer Prizes) The cage on Benjina is empty now.

The question it left behind is still sitting in every freezer aisle: who caught this?

Case notes: how slavery hid in plain sight

What makes Benjina disturbing is not that it was hidden. Workers in the region told reporters that slavery on fishing boats was an open secret. The problem was that nobody along the chain had a reason to look.

Distance did the hiding. Fish caught by a trafficked man in eastern Indonesia passed through a cargo ship, a Thai port, trucks, factories and importers before it reached a shelf in America. Every step added a company that could say it only handled the product, not the people who caught it. By the time it became a can of cat food, the cage was invisible.

Paperwork made people disappear. Fake names on identity documents meant fake names on graves. If a man has no real record, his death leaves no record either. That is why the cemetery on Benjina matters: it was evidence that could not be erased.

Following the product worked. The reporters did not just collect stories. They tracked one shipment, step by step, until it connected to brands that buyers recognize. That link is what forced governments and companies to act, and it is why more than 2,000 men went home.

For Myint Naing, it took 22 years and a news investigation to undo one broker’s promise. The question for the rest of us is smaller, but it is the same one the reporters asked: where did this come from, and who caught it?

Case file summary

  • Case: Forced labor on fishing boats operating out of Benjina, Indonesia
  • Exposed by: The Associated Press “Seafood from Slaves” investigation, March 2015
  • Outcome: More than 2,000 fishermen rescued; 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service
  • Featured survivor: Myint Naing, trafficked from Myanmar in 1993, home in 2015 after 22 years

Illustrations are artistic interpretations, not photographs or evidence. The boat captain shown is a composite character, not a depiction of a real person. This story is unrelated to the plot of the 2019 film Buoyancy, which is fiction inspired by similar accounts.

Sources

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