On Tuesday, Thai shipowner Somkiat Kitpokha was sitting anxiously in his office in Mahachai hoping to hear good news from an Indonesian court more than 6,000km away.
The fisheries court on Ambon Island was due to hand down its verdicts against six fishermen, including two Thais, charged with illegally fishing in waters controlled by Indonesia last December.
Mr Somkiat, the head of Century Reefer Co Ltd based in Samut Sakhon province, wasn’t confident of a positive outcome as Indonesian authorities had already destroyed the two vessels at the centre of the case.
“Our chance of winning the case is slim,” he told Spectrum. “Our boats were destroyed by the Indonesian Navy, which received the order from the Indonesian government.”
As it turned out, no ruling was made on Tuesday or before Spectrum went to press later in the week.
But the case does represent a strong test for international maritime law in the region after the detention of the Century Reefer-owned Century 4 and Century 7 fishing vessels by the Indonesian Navy on Dec 7.
In a spectacular and much-publicised event with aerial images sent around the world, the ships were set ablaze on Dec 21 for allegedly encroaching on waters under the authority of Indonesia.
The case involving the six crew members is the final one over the incident, with four other trials allowing for the release of 54 crew from Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar.
“Our boats are gone. What’s done is done,” Mr Somkiat said.
“What I am hoping for now is for the Indonesian court to let my men home.”
Somkiat Kitpokhat, the head of Century Reefer Co Ltd, says his ships were in Papua New Guinean waters when detained.
INDONESIAN ACTION
In December, Indonesia announced a hardcore approach to combat illegal fishing, after President Joko Widodo heralded his plan to preserve fish stocks in waters controlled by his country.
The archipelago’s waters are vast, stretching from the Indian to the Pacific oceans and the South China Sea.
Indonesia is the second-largest capture fisheries producer in the world after China in 2012, according to the Food and Agricultural Organisation. The Indonesian Ministry of Maritime and Fisheries in December began detaining all foreign fishing ships in its waters to verify whether they were legal or illegal.
New regulations to obtain a fishing licence for foreign ships in Indonesian controlled waters were issued including, for instance, a requirement that the entire crew would be Indonesian and a ban on trawling nets.
According to several sources, more than 100 Thai fishing vessels are currently docked in Indonesia undergoing verification.
Several thousand fishermen, including many Thais, are living inside the boats, waiting for the end of the suspension scheduled for April 30.
“It is uncertain now what will happen to these boats [after the suspension],” one source told Spectrum. “Two-thirds of fishermen living in these fishing boats are Thai.”
FOREIGN ‘INVADERS’
The Century 4 and Century 7 were caught up in the crackdown when they were accused of operating in Indonesian waters without a licence and documents.
According to information from the Indonesian Navy website, the Century 4 was carrying 43 tonnes of fish, while the Century 7 was carrying 20 tonnes of fish when seized.
Navy spokesman Commodore Manahan Simorangkir justified the destruction of the ships at the time by saying that proper legal procedures had been carried out at the Ambon court and the owners were found guilty of stealing fish from Indonesian waters.
“We must sink these ships so that other foreign ships will think twice before fishing illegally in our territory,” he told the Jakarta Post.
He said the boats were caught near the sea border of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, south of Merauke.
Navy officials based at Ambon said “the ships were flying the Papua New Guinean flag but the crew were all Thai”.
But Mr Somkiat said his vessels were fishing legally in Papua New Guinean waters with a proper licence when they were detained. “We did not want to fish in Indonesian waters because we were afraid of a problem like this,” he said.
He said his boats clearly displayed the proper licences to fish in Papua New Guinean waters on their sides. The Century 4 was showing “PNG-051”, while the Century 7 was showing “PNG-064”.
STAND-OFF AT SEA
Shortly before the two vessels were detained in the early morning of Dec 7, Mr Somkiat received an unexpected satellite phone call from Thanaphol Pannisai, 50, the captain of the Century 4. The captain informed him that Indonesian Navy battleship No 355 was approaching.
“The captain asked me why the Indonesian battleship was in Papua New Guinean waters,” Mr Somkiat said. “He asked me what he should do. I told him to wait and see. After that, I lost contact with him until after the boats were destroyed and our lawyers could contact him in prison.”
Mr Somkiat later learned that minutes after he lost phone contact, the battleship had fired a warning shot intended to deter the boats from trying to escape. A group of Indonesian military officers then boarded the vessels via rubber dinghies and took the crews back to the navy ship.
“The Indonesian soldiers then took control of the fishing vessels and steered them back to Indonesian waters,” Mr Somkiat claimed.
He said the navy officers forced his captains to sign a document written in Indonesian. “The captains could not read Indonesian. They did not understand what the papers were. But they said they had no choice but to sign, because they were afraid they might be hurt.”
Mr Somkiat said the documents turned out to be confessions to fishing illegally in Indonesian waters. He maintains that when the vessels were detained, their coordinates placed them inside Papua New Guinean waters. Mr Somkiat said satellite images recorded the movement of his vessel once every 12 hours, and he could also see the real-time location of the ships from a screen in Thailand.
“When the captain called me, I told him that if anything happened, to hide the device which recorded the movement of the vessels inside the boat. I said, ‘Don’t bring the evidence down with you because it might be confiscated.’ But the device was lost with the boats when they were destroyed on Dec 21,” he said.
In the week it took to take the seized Thai vessels back to Ambon, Chinese fishing boats were also detained by the Indonesians. “But they chose to destroy our boats, not the Chinese,” Mr Somkiat said.
The Indonesian embassy in Thailand disputes Mr Somkiat’s claims and gives different coordinates for where the vessels were detained, placing them in waters under Indonesian authority.
ROUGH JUSTICE
The owner appointed three Indonesian lawyers to represent his men, but when the vessels arrived at Ambon on Dec 14, their request to meet the two captains was turned down by the Indonesian Navy.
The lawyers also sought assistance from the Thai embassy in Jakarta, which according to one consular official tried to push for a fair trial through diplomatic channels, but with little success.
Eventually on the morning of Dec 20, the Indonesian Navy told the lawyers that their request to meet their clients had been granted. The legal team flew from Jakarta to meet the captains in the evening.
However, their attempts to communicate failed because the Thai interpreter provided by the navy was ill. A request by the lawyers to check the boats was also turned down by the Indonesian Navy.
Local media had reported that the boats were due to be destroyed soon. The lawyers urged the navy not to sink the boats, arguing it would be a violation of international law.
“My lawyers told the Indonesian Navy officers that if the court had proved the two vessels had not broken the law, the navy would have to pay for the damages if they destroyed our boats. But they did not care,” Mr Somkiat said.
SINKING SHIPS
Early on Dec 21, Mr Somkiat received a call from Ambon saying that navy boats had started to pull his fishing vessels offshore around 4.30am local time. About one hour later, he was told that his vessels had been set ablaze. “I was in shock. I don’t know how to describe what I felt,” he said.
In addition to the two Thai vessels, the Indonesian Navy destroyed a fishing boat from Vietnam they had seized separately. The Indonesian press reported the vessels were the fourth and fifth ships sunk by Indonesia in the three months since President Joko Widodo had taken office.
A Thai consular official in Indonesia declined to comment directly on the case, but noted that the Thai vessels, according to documents from Century Reefer’s lawyers, were caught in the Arafura Sea in an exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
International law states that fishermen caught fishing illegally in such zones should be fined and not subject to jail terms, the official said.
But an official from the Indonesian embassy in Thailand, who asked not to be named, denied any wrongdoing. She said Indonesian law allows for local authorities to take action against illegal fishing.
“Such actions may include the burning or sinking of foreign fishing vessels, taking into account the difficulties in taking care of the confiscated vessels, which include financial consequences,” she said. “The [confiscated] vessels are also considered perishable items.”
Asked whether the Indonesian government may have violated international maritime law by destroying the vessels, the official said: “International maritime law does not govern explicitly the issue of destroying a vessel caught illegally fishing in territorial or EEZ waters.”
FAR FROM HOME
Before the explosion, the Indonesian Navy transferred all crew members from the two vessels to Ambon Immigration. The group included 19 Thais, 22 Myanmar citizens and 19 Cambodians, according to the Thai consular officer in Indonesia.
The Indonesian Navy later released the workers, except for the two Thai captains, plus the two Myanmar and two Cambodian nationals in senior command positions on the boats. In addition to Mr Thanaphol, the other Thai is Thongma Laphoti, 60, who was captain of the Century 7.
The Thai consular office contacted the Cambodian and Myanmar embassies to arrange to take their people home.
“We have had to coordinate with other governments to verify the identities of these people,” the consular officer said, adding that the repatriation of Cambodian crew members had proceeded well.
The officer said Mr Somkiat had offered to pay all expenses to bring his fishermen home.
The repatriation of the Myanmar workers did not progress as quickly as the Cambodians, Mr Somkiat said, because the approval process in Myanmar was more complicated.
DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH
Mr Somkiat has been in the fisheries business for more than 30 years. Century Reefer started fishing overseas about a decade ago, first in Indonesia and then in Papua New Guinea four years ago.
“Papua New Guinea’s fish stocks are lower and its waters are much smaller than Indonesia’s. People call Papua New Guinean waters the ‘dog’s leg’. But we prefer to fish in Papua New Guinea because of regulations there.
“For instance, foreign operators can maintain full ownership of their boats. In Indonesia, you need to jointly own the boats with Indonesians to get a licence to fish,” he said.
Aside from the two sunken ships, Century Reef has eight other vessels currently fishing overseas. Four of them are in the Indian Ocean and the other four are in Papua New Guinean waters. Mr Somkiat said those vessels are operating as usual.
Asked about damages from the loss of his two vessels, he said each ship would cost 20 million baht to replace.
“I don’t think that the Indonesian Navy will pay the damages or admit they are guilty. This is like a David and Goliath battle. Our chance of winning is slim. But it does not matter to me. I am sitting here comfortably in Thailand, while my men are in prison in Indonesia.
“I am not asking for anything but for my men to be released and sent home. They do not deserve this. They did not do anything wrong.” n