Indonesia Takes Tough Stance in Fighting Illegal Fishing
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Version 0 of 1. After years of neglect, the Indonesian government said on Thursday that it would take a hard line against thousands of illegal foreign fishing vessels that it says rob the local industry of as much as $25 billion a year in lost catches. In recent weeks, the Indonesian Navy has seized and sunk dozens of foreign fishing boats from neighboring countries like Malaysia and Vietnam. The government said this week that those vessels did not have permission to be in local waters and that they were often in search of high-value species like tuna. Since assuming office in October as president of this vast sweep of about 18,000 islands, Joko Widodo has made the development of the country’s fisheries and ports a priority. Poaching, which affects some of the country’s poorest citizens and often occurs far out to sea, had received scant attention from Jakarta, but the government has vowed to step up its pursuit of foreign trawlers. “We are starting a war against illegal fishing,” the country’s maritime and fisheries minister, Susi Pudjiastuti, said in an interview on Thursday. “We will track down and sink every single illegal fishing vessel we catch.” So far, the minister appears to have the enthusiastic backing of her boss. Mr. Joko said in a speech this week that the capture and destruction of about 30 foreign fishing boats in past weeks was “only a first warning.” But that warning is as much to local black marketeers as it is to foreign interests who seize on lax government oversight or corrupt officials who sell bootleg fish stocks to overseas buyers. Ms. Pudjiastuti said that local kingpins often provide the infrastructure and cover necessary for foreign vessels to operate here, forging documents, for example, to support claims that the vessels are registered in Indonesia. Possibly one-quarter of the roughly 7,000 illegal fishing boats are helped in this way, she said. The specter of hunting down and sinking foreign fishing boats is expected to be a popular measure among Indonesians, burnishing Mr. Joko’s man-of-the-people image as he tackles corruption and poverty after years of drift under his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Ms. Pudjiastuti issued a moratorium on new fishing licenses within a week of taking over as the head of the Fisheries Ministry. She also put a stop to the practice of transferring catches at sea, which make it possible to spirit cargoes overseas and away from the domestic processing industry as well as regulators. The government will buy more patrol boats and revisit plans to form a coast guard that can monitor the country’s nearly 34,000 miles of coastline, Ms. Pudjiastuti said. Paul Rowan, an analyst and contributor to the weekly Indonesian affairs newsletter Reformasi, said that in pursuing the new course, the government “wants to make a point internationally, but primarily their audience is domestic.” “They want to be seen to be tough enough to stand up for the little guy,” he said. |