On Friday 1 May 2026, Indonesia’s President stood before a May Day crowd in Jakarta and signed a promise into law. Presidential Regulation No. 25 of 2026 ratified the International Labour Organization’s Convention No. 188 on Work in Fishing — the binding treaty that sets minimum standards for the working and living conditions of fishers. Indonesia deposited its instrument of ratification with the ILO on Wednesday 10 June 2026. It was, by any measure, a landmark: one of the world’s largest fishing nations had put its name to the global rulebook for fisher welfare.
Less than two months later, a squid boat sailed out of Jakarta’s Nizam Zachman Ocean Fishing Port with 28 crew aboard, contracts nobody had checked, and wage promises nobody intended to keep. By October, four of those crew members had been beaten — stuffed into a barrel of water, stomped on, punched — for failing to haul two kilograms of squid a night. The country’s own fisheries surveillance chief called what he found aboard “perbudakan”: slavery.
This is the story of KM Maulana 23 — and of what happens when a law exists on paper and nowhere else.
The case at a glance
| Vessel | KM Maulana 23 — an 89-gross-tonnage squid fishing vessel |
| Where | Aru Sea (Laut Aru), Maluku province, eastern Indonesia; sailed from Nizam Zachman Ocean Fishing Port, Jakarta |
| Crew | 28 crew members |
| Victims | Four crew members: Ilham Shalahudin, Oktavian Makhreza, Johan Saputra and Syawal Suswono |
| The trigger | A nightly quota of at least 2 kg of squid per crew member; beatings ordered by the deputy captain for anyone who fell short |
| The law | ILO Convention No. 188 (Work in Fishing), ratified by Indonesia on 10 June 2026; enters into force for Indonesia on 10 June 2027 |
| Status | Vessel intercepted 2 October 2026; licence suspended and revocation under way; 18 assault suspects named; human-trafficking investigation open |
What happened aboard KM Maulana 23
The vessel left Nizam Zachman Port — one of Indonesia’s largest government-supervised fishing ports — in late July 2026, bound for the squid grounds of the Aru Sea. The 28 crew had been recruited with a clear promise: an advance of Rp 5,000,000 (about $279) and a profit share of up to Rp 10,000,000 (about $559). Over four months of operations, they received Rp 500,000 (about $28). Dollar figures are approximate, at October 2026 exchange rates.
Life aboard followed the rhythm of squid jigging, a nocturnal method that uses bright underwater lights to draw squid to the surface. The crew worked from late afternoon through the following morning and were given two meals a day. One crew member developed beriberi in early August 2026 and was left ashore without adequate care; the operators told his mother he was receiving hospital treatment — a claim that later proved false. The vessel’s monitoring system was inactive, and it was operating squid jigging gear despite holding a permit for a different net type.
The abuse came to light when a video began circulating on Indonesian social media on Wednesday 30 September 2026. It showed a crew member crammed inside a barrel of water while others stomped on it, punched him and sprayed water in his face. Indonesia’s Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries (KKP) moved the same week: its patrol vessel KP Hiu 14 intercepted KM Maulana 23 on Friday 2 October 2026 in the Aru Sea and escorted it to Dobo in the Aru Islands, where the four victims were treated at Cendrawasih Hospital.
| 30 Sep 2025 | Tripartite meeting in Jakarta (government, employers, unions, ILO) agrees to pursue ratification of ILO C188 by 2026 |
| 1 May 2026 (Fri) | President Prabowo signs Presidential Regulation No. 25 of 2026, ratifying ILO C188, at the May Day commemoration in Jakarta |
| May 2026 | KKP issues Ministerial Regulation No. 4 of 2026 on fishing vessel crew governance, incorporating C188’s provisions on fair wages and humane hours |
| 10 Jun 2026 (Wed) | Indonesia deposits its ratification instrument with the ILO in Geneva; the Convention will enter into force for Indonesia on 10 June 2027 |
| Late Jul 2026 | KM Maulana 23 sails from Nizam Zachman Port with 28 crew, wage promises unfulfilled and contracts unverified |
| 30 Sep 2026 (Wed) | Video of the barrel torture circulates on Indonesian social media |
| 2 Oct 2026 (Fri) | KKP patrol vessel KP Hiu 14 intercepts KM Maulana 23 in the Aru Sea and escorts it to Dobo; four victims treated in hospital |
| 7 Oct 2026 (Wed) | Tanjung Priok Port Police elevate the suspected human-trafficking (TPPO) case to formal inquiry |
| 10 Oct 2026 (Sat) | Aru Islands police name 18 assault suspects — all of them crew members of the vessel itself; no trafficking suspects named yet at that point |
| 13 Oct 2026 (Tue) | Greenpeace Indonesia publishes its formal demand: prosecute the owners and recruiters, trace the squid buyers, fix the port system |
| Mid-Oct 2026 | Indonesian media report Tanjung Priok Port Police have named nine suspects in the trafficking case, including alleged debt bondage and document falsification in recruitment |
KKP’s Director General of Marine and Fisheries Resources Surveillance, Pung Nugroho Saksono, did not mince words. The shipboard rules, he said, ordered physical punishment for crew who missed their catch targets. “This is a form of slavery; people are working and are tortured and beaten. This is a free era. The KKP is present, the state is present. We must ensure that these fishermen are protected,” he said in an official statement on 6 October 2026.
The law on paper: what Indonesia actually signed
ILO Convention No. 188, adopted in 2007, is the only binding international treaty written specifically for fishers. It sets minimum standards for the working and living conditions of everyone who works on a fishing vessel — and, crucially, it gives governments a concrete enforcement job: the competent authority must inspect vessels and verify that employment agreements are in place before they sail from a supervised port.
| What C188 guarantees | What it means in practice |
| Written work agreements | Every fisher must have a written agreement setting out pay, hours and conditions — checked by the authorities before departure |
| Minimum age and medical fitness | No child labour aboard; fishers must be medically fit for work at sea |
| Hours of rest | Minimum rest periods, so “evening to morning, every night” shifts are not lawful |
| Accommodation and food | Decent living space and adequate food aboard — not two meals a day as a ration |
| Occupational safety and health | Safe working conditions, protective equipment and accident prevention |
| Medical care and social security | Access to medical care at sea and in port, and social security coverage |
| Port inspection | Governments must inspect fishing vessels and verify agreements before they sail |
Indonesia’s path to ratification was deliberate. On May Day 2025, President Prabowo Subianto publicly committed to ratifying the Convention. In late September 2025, the Ministry of Manpower convened a high-level tripartite meeting in Jakarta with the ILO, the maritime affairs and fisheries ministry, the foreign affairs ministry, the migrant workers protection ministry, employers and trade unions, and agreed to pursue ratification by 2026. The ILO’s Country Director for Indonesia and Timor-Leste, Simrin Singh, called ratification “a pivotal step” and noted Indonesia would become the second ASEAN country to ratify the Convention. The ILO’s Ship to Shore Rights programme, funded by the European Union and run with the International Organization for Migration and the FAO, had already helped set up Joint Inspection Teams for labour norms aboard fishing vessels in Central Java and North Kalimantan.
Indonesia was not alone in 2026. The Solomon Islands ratified C188 on 8 January 2026, alongside the Maritime Labour Convention; both enter into force for the country on 8 January 2027. Iceland deposited its ratification of C188 and Convention No. 191 on 5 June 2026, joining Denmark and Norway as the Nordic countries to have ratified. Press reporting in October 2026 put the total number of ratifying countries at 27 — against 113 for the Maritime Labour Convention, which covers seafarers but explicitly excludes fishing vessels. The fishing treaty remains the neglected sibling.
The enforcement gap: five demands from Greenpeace Indonesia
Greenpeace Indonesia’s statement of 13 October 2026 is blunt about what the official response had not done: name the owning company by its full name, identify who bought the squid, or charge anyone above deck level with human trafficking. The owning company has been identified publicly only by its initials, PT AMIR. KKP has examined the company, suspended the vessel’s operating licence and begun processing its revocation — but those are administrative steps. Criminal liability for the owners and the recruitment agents depends on the trafficking investigation. When the vessel was stopped it was carrying about one tonne of squid; the buyer of that catch remains unknown to the public.
Greenpeace’s five demands are worth reading in full, because they are a checklist any country — including India — can use to test whether its own fisher protections are real:
1. Restore the victims’ rights in full — the wages and profit share promised at recruitment, restitution under Indonesia’s anti-trafficking law (Law No. 21 of 2007), medical and psychological care, and protection from the Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK).
2. Prosecute PT AMIR and the recruitment agents — not only the crew members already charged with assault — for their roles in recruitment, wage payment and setting catch targets, and inspect the company’s other vessels.
3. Disclose the port failure at Nizam Zachman — explain the status of the 28 crew’s maritime work agreements and the placement mechanism that let the vessel sail, so the public can see exactly where the inspection system broke.
4. Trace and publish the supply chain — identify who bought KM Maulana 23’s squid, and call on processors and exporters that received the fleet’s catch to stop buying from it during the investigation.
5. Guarantee safe communication and grievance channels for fishing crew while they are at sea — so the next crew does not have to wait for a viral video to be heard.
The organisation’s ocean campaigner, Sihar Silalahi, framed the case as a credibility test. Indonesia led the creation of crew protection standards at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission — proposing them in 2020, after four years of negotiation, adopted in December 2024 — and asks other nations to respect the rights of Indonesian crew on foreign-flagged vessels. “But on Indonesian-flagged vessels themselves, Indonesian crew are beaten for failing to meet catch targets,” he said. “Indonesia must apply those standards across all Indonesian vessels before demanding that other nations do the same. Without domestic enforcement, Indonesia’s leadership in regional forums will look like lip service.”
A pattern, not an exception
Greenpeace Indonesia notes that KM Maulana 23 repeats a pattern: the cases of the Chinese-flagged squid boats Run Zeng 03 and Run Zeng 05 in 2024, in which crew jumped overboard to escape abuse and one died, and KM Awindo 2A in 2025. In each case, the same ingredients recur — informal recruitment from economically marginal coastal communities, contracts that do not reflect actual wages, remote fishing grounds that isolate crew from communication and legal recourse, and commercial incentives that push operators to maximise catch at minimum cost.
The scale is not small. The ILO estimates that about 128,000 fishers face forced labour aboard fishing vessels worldwide at any given time. A March 2026 report by Greenpeace Southeast Asia, produced with the Uniting Church in Australia, found 25 Indonesian crew members across 17 vessels who reported forced labour conditions, identified alleged connections to five Indonesian seafood companies supplying the Australian market, and found indicators of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Its conclusion was that Indonesia’s regulation of employment for domestic territorial fishers “remains weak” — a finding the KM Maulana 23 case now reinforces.
There is also a market clock ticking. The European Union’s ban on products made with forced labour takes effect in December 2027. For a country whose seafood reaches European shelves, a documented forced-labour case is no longer only a human rights problem; it is a trade problem too.
What it means for India
India has not ratified ILO Convention No. 188. It does not appear in the Government of India’s published list of ratified ILO conventions, and no ratification has been recorded since that list was tabled in Parliament. India did ratify the Maritime Labour Convention in 2015 — but that treaty explicitly excludes fishing vessels. In other words, the world’s second-largest fish-producing country has no binding international commitment covering the working conditions of its own fishers.
That gap matters right now, because India is writing its own fisher-protection framework. A draft National Plan of Action for Small-Scale Fisheries (NPOA-SSF) is reported for public release on World Fisheries Day, Saturday 21 November 2026, after a nationwide consultation in which fishers themselves demanded compensation for lost fishing days, legal recognition of their rights over nearshore waters, and protection for fisherwomen. The consultations in South Andaman and Ramanathapuram in October and November 2026 put social security and decent work at the centre of the draft.
Indonesia’s experience offers India four lessons that cost nothing to copy:
Check the agreement before the boat sails, not after it returns. C188’s core enforcement duty is departure-port inspection: verify the written work agreement and the crew’s welfare conditions before the vessel leaves. KM Maulana 23 sailed from a government-supervised port with deceptive wage contracts and no effective check. A port check that catches nothing is worse than no check at all, because it creates the illusion of protection.
Prosecute up the chain, not only on the deck. As of 10 October 2026, all 18 assault suspects were crew members of the vessel itself. The owners, the recruiters and the buyers had not been charged. Until liability reaches the companies that own vessels and buy their catch, the incentive structure that produces abuse does not change.
Give crew a way to call for help while at sea. The crew of KM Maulana 23 were isolated in the Aru Sea, one of Indonesia’s most distant fishing grounds, with no safe grievance channel. A 24-hour complaint line exists on paper in Indonesia — KKP publicises the number 0811 1000 3132 — but a number nobody aboard can reach is not a safeguard.
Trace the catch to the buyer. About a tonne of squid was aboard KM Maulana 23 when it was stopped, and nobody can say who bought it. Supply-chain traceability is the difference between a prosecution that ends at the deck and one that reaches the businesses that profit.
What to watch next
The trafficking case. Indonesian media reported in mid-October 2026 that Tanjung Priok Port Police had named nine suspects in the human-trafficking investigation, including alleged debt bondage, recruitment through social media, confinement in boarding rooms and document falsification. Human trafficking carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison under Indonesian law. Whether the owners and recruiters are ultimately charged — or only the crew — is the real test of the case.
The port inquiry. Greenpeace has demanded a public account of the oversight failure at Nizam Zachman Port. KKP has the authority, under its own Ministerial Regulation No. 4 of 2026, to require processors and exporters to disclose their supply-chain links to vessels under investigation. Whether it uses that authority will show whether accountability extends past the deck.
10 June 2027. That is the date C188 enters into force for Indonesia — one year after the ratification instrument was deposited. From that day, Indonesia must report to the ILO on how it applies the Convention. The KM Maulana 23 case will be the first exhibit in that report.
India’s draft plan on 21 November 2026. When the NPOA-SSF draft is released for public consultation on World Fisheries Day, read it against the Indonesian lesson: does it require written agreements, verified before departure? Does it give crew a grievance channel at sea? Does it reach the owners and buyers, or only the workers?
Frequently asked questions
What is ILO Convention No. 188?
The Work in Fishing Convention, 2007 — the only binding international treaty written specifically for fishers. It sets minimum standards for work agreements, hours of rest, accommodation and food, occupational safety and health, medical care and social security, and requires governments to inspect fishing vessels before they sail.
Has Indonesia ratified it?
Yes. President Prabowo signed Presidential Regulation No. 25 of 2026 on 1 May 2026, and Indonesia deposited its ratification instrument with the ILO on 10 June 2026. The Convention enters into force for Indonesia on Thursday 10 June 2027.
What happened on KM Maulana 23?
Four crew members were beaten — including being stuffed into a barrel of water — for failing to meet a nightly quota of 2 kg of squid. They had been promised Rp 5,000,000 in advance pay and up to Rp 10,000,000 in profit share, but received only Rp 500,000 over four months. The vessel was intercepted on 2 October 2026; 18 assault suspects were named, all crew members, and a human-trafficking investigation is under way.
Has India ratified C188?
No. India has not ratified the Convention, and the Maritime Labour Convention it did ratify in 2015 explicitly excludes fishing vessels. India’s draft National Plan of Action for Small-Scale Fisheries is reported for public release on 21 November 2026.
How many countries have ratified C188?
Press reporting in October 2026 put the total at 27 countries, including Indonesia, Iceland and the Solomon Islands in 2026 — far fewer than the 113 that have ratified the Maritime Labour Convention for seafarers.
Where can fishing crew report abuse?
In Indonesia, KKP publicises a 24-hour complaint call centre at 0811 1000 3132. Greenpeace Indonesia’s demand is that such channels be genuinely reachable from sea, not only listed on paper.
Read more on Fisheries India
- World Fisheries Day 2026: 600M Livelihoods, 1 Big Warning — record production, falling sustainability, and why small-scale fishers are the centre of the day.
- Andaman Fishers Demand Pay for Every Ban Day — 40 small-scale fishers from ten South Andaman villages put compensation for ban and cyclone days on record.
- India’s Small Fishers Demand Pay for Lost Sea Days — the nationwide NPOA-SSF consultation and the draft plan due on World Fisheries Day.
- Guyana’s Seabob Plan: Co-ops to Global Export by 2032 — how five coastal cooperatives are building a safer, formal future for artisanal fishers.
Official links and sources
- ILO NORMLEX — Ratifications for Indonesia (C188 Work in Fishing Convention, 2007: ratified 10 June 2026, not yet in force; enters into force for Indonesia 10 June 2027)
- Cabinet Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia, 1 May 2026 — President Prabowo Signs Presidential Regulation Ratifying ILO Convention 188 (Perpres No. 25 of 2026 signed on May Day; 1,386 fishing villages to be inaugurated)
- ILO, 30 September 2025 tripartite meeting — Indonesia advances toward ratifying ILO Convention No. 188 (C188 adopted 2007; covers conditions of service, accommodation and food, occupational safety and health, medical care and social security; Ship to Shore Rights programme; Joint Inspection Teams in Central Java and North Kalimantan)
- Greenpeace Indonesia, 13 October 2026 — Penyiksaan Awak Kapal Terulang di KM Maulana 23 (in Indonesian) (video 30 Sep 2026; interception 2 Oct; 89 GT, 28 crew; wage deception; two meals a day; beriberi case; 18 assault suspects; TPPO inquiry from 7 Oct; PT AMIR; five demands; WCPFC standards proposed 2020)
- Antara via Jawawa, 5 October 2026 — Chronology of Multiple Violations on KM Maulana 23 (KP Hiu 14 interception 2 Oct; 28 crew; 2 kg/night quota; DG Saksono: “perbudakan”; VMS inactive; gear-permit mismatch)
- Antara via Jawawa, 9 October 2026 — Police Pursue Suspects in Human Trafficking Case (TPPO investigation upgraded 7 Oct; four victims named; vessel boarded late July 2026 at Muara Baru Port)
- Universitas Gadjah Mada, 12 May 2026 — Legal Protection for Fishing Crew After ILO 188 Ratification (Perpres No. 25 of 2026; Ministerial Regulation No. 4 of 2026; “policy implementation remains the greatest challenge”)
- ILO, 8 January 2026 — Solomon Islands ratifies MLC 2006 and Work in Fishing Convention No. 188 (both enter into force for Solomon Islands 8 January 2027)
- SAFETY4SEA, 8 June 2026 — Iceland ratifies ILO Conventions No. 188 and 191 (instruments deposited 5 June 2026; joins Denmark and Norway among Nordic ratifiers)
- Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 171, answered 14 September 2020 — list of ILO Conventions ratified by India (47 conventions; C188 absent; India ratified the Maritime Labour Convention, 2006 on 9 October 2015)
All facts above were verified on 11 November 2026 against the official and primary sources listed. Spellings of the victims’ names vary slightly between Indonesian and English-language reports; this post uses the spellings in Antara’s reporting. Wage figures in US dollars are approximate, at October 2026 exchange rates. The nine human-trafficking suspects are reported by Indonesian media in mid-October 2026. The Convention enters into force for Indonesia on 10 June 2027, one year after ratification. Images in this post are illustrations, not photographs of KM Maulana 23 or its crew.