Modern Slavery: Not Just for Overpaid Athletes Anymore

Not all modern-day slaves make tens of millions of dollars for being bad football players.

When environmental campaigners began tracking a hi-tech South Korean trawler off the coast of West Africa, they were looking for proof of illegal fishing of dwindling African stocks. What they uncovered was an altogether different kind of travesty: human degradation so extreme it echoed the slavery they thought had been abolished more than a century ago.

[...]

"The men were working in the fish hold with no air or ventilation in temperatures of 40-45 degrees. It was rusty, greasy, hot and sweaty. There were cockroaches everywhere in the galleys and their food was in disgusting boxes. All they had for washing was a pump bringing up salt water. They stank. It was heartbreaking."

[...]

The Sierra Leonean crew members said they were not paid with money but in boxes of "trash" fish – the bycatch rejected by the European market – which they would be given to sell locally. If anyone complained, the captain would abandon them on the nearest beach, they said.

[Guardian]