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The Current Transcript for November 12, 2019

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Violence is not going to give us any solutions to the problems that Hong Kong is facing. Our joint priority now is to end the violence and to return Hong Kong so normal.

LAURA LYNCH: Despite Carrie Lam's repeated calls for an end to Hong Kong protests, the chief executive's words are being ignored. Today, activists are back clashing with police on university campuses, even as two men like critically injured in hospital. In about half an hour, we'll check in on what's happening in Hong Kong. After that, lawlessness, slavery and people smuggling. The dark secrets of life on the open oceans. But first.

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VOICE: You make one little comment like you people. I'm not whining or anything, I'm just saying that I could have stayed on if I wanted to and knuckle under and turn into a simp, but that's not my style. I'd rather go out with my shield.

LL: Don Cherry isn't backing down. In an interview with Toronto Radio Station Newstalk 1010 last night, Cherry made no apologies for the comments that got him fired from his Coach's Corner segment on Hockey Night in Canada. That is where we're starting today. I'm Laura Lynch and this is The Current.

Why now? Here's why Don Cherry's comments may have been 'the last straw’

Guests: Bhupinder Hundal, Ellen Hyslop, Bruce Arthur

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DON CHERRY: I don't believe and I really believe this, I don't believe women should be in the male dressing room. I don't feel women are equal. I feel they're above us. And I think they're on a pedestal. And they should not be walking in when naked guys are walking in and you know some guys take advantage of it. I don't think it should be.

DON CHERRY: But listen, new kid, don't get caught in the Canadian syndrome, where if it's Canadian, it's got to be bad. We're the best. I've been telling you the best. How about the guy that used to be on about four five years ago and, you know, all those other amazing upper body strength of the Russians. So amazing. They're nothing. Just a minute. They're nothingh.

DON CHERRY: Well are you saying that natives have an inferiority complex is when something happens to them.

RON MACLEAN: Some you'd have to ask Chris, but why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't some kids feel like they haven't been given a fair shake in life? Ask Davidson.

DON CHERRY: Darn shake in life. Go out and get your own fair shake in life and work for it.

RON MACLEAN: Oh Don, that's.

DON CHERRY: Don't give me that stuff.

LL: Don Cherry has been giving his own stuff for years, but it was Saturday night's rant about "you people" not wearing Remembrance Day poppies that got him fired from his segment on Hockey Night in Canada. In a statement, the president of SportsNet called the remarks divisive and said they don't represent the company's values. And the mixed reaction from hockey fans certainly speaks to that division. Here's what some people visiting the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto had to say yesterday after hearing the news.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: He got fired today?

VOICE 2: I think it's unfortunate. I think we're supposed to have free speech in this country. And it wasn't hate speech, he just was speaking his mind. People have the right to be offended. That should be fine. He shouldn't have gotten fired. I think it's a shame. I think he's an icon. He supports Canadian armed forces. I think he stands for a lot of things that Canadians do believe in. I think it's unfortunate.

VOICE 3: Do you know he is?

VOICE 4: Is it the guy who got fired for making a racist remark about immigrants?

VOICE 5: He got fired?

VOICE 4: Yeah.

VOICE 5: OK.

VOICE 4: I don't know. I think it's pretty controversial because he's been in the game for so long, but at the same time, what he said was really wrong.

VOICE 5: I think it's kind of sad, but people are sensitive and that's the way it goes now. Can't really, you got to really watch what you say. So it couldn't have been targeted towards a specific group of people, but who knows? People take offence to everything, so.

VOICE 6: I'm surprised man. Really surprised. Yeah. It's hard to imagine not having Hockey Night in Canada without him. But it's sad. Now my kids won't see him either. So it is what it is.

VOICE 7: But he's still a legend, you know. We like him. We love him. As hockey fans, you know. But you know, we wish him all the best, I guess. But his comments were a little harsh, but I'm sure he didn't mean. He just meant to say support the cause. That's what he's trying to mean, but you know, it came out wrong.

LL: Three people join me now to talk about what happened and why it took so long for Don Cherry's comments to catch up with him and what's next for hockey fans. Bhupinder Hundal is a former broadcaster with Hockey Night in Canada in Punjabi. He is now a senior producer with CBC Vancouver. He joins us from our Vancouver studio. Bruce Arthur is a sports columnist for The Toronto Star. We reached him in Toronto. And Ellen Hyslop is a co-founder of The Gist, an online sports outlet for women. And she's with me in our Toronto studio. Hello, everybody.

ELLEN HYSLOP: Hi. Thanks for having us.

BHUPINDER HUNDAL: Hello.

BRUCE ARTHUR: Good morning.

LL: Bhupinder, let's start with you and start here. What was your reaction to the news that Don Cherry had been fired?

BHUPINDER HUNDAL: Well, I I think the fact that he is standing by his comments, he wouldn't clarify it further or take the opportunity to come on the air again and reform his comment. I think there was really no other alternative, but to make the decision that SportsNet ultimately did. I mean, I know we're concentrating on you people, but, you know, for people who want a little bit of greater context, it's not just you people. It's you people plus that come here, plus you love our way of life. The whole the whole thing is really about othering a group and making it very clear that there's two distinct groups that he's talking about. And he's singling specifically a section of people who don't wear a poppy, not all people who don't wear a poppy. So I think that's where the problem is. And the other part of it as well is it fails to recognize the contribution of immigrants who to the war effort for those who came to Canada when they didn't have any rights and still decided to enlist and fight in the war. And, you know, for example, Sikhs as part of the British regiment fought alongside Canadians and British troops on the front lines, paid the ultimate sacrifice. They made the contribution for our way of life too. I think the whole rant in its entirety really served to other a specific group of people.

LL: Ellen Hyslop, how surprised were you by the news?

ELLEN HYSLOP: I was actually pretty surprised that SportsNet ended up pulling the plug. I wasn't sure if they would give him another shot to actually go back on air and in Hockey Night in Canada. At the same time, though, I, you hear what we heard at the beginning of this radio show and it's happening again and again and again. And this to me was really the final straw of what he said and how he singled out a group of people and how he specifically called out Mississauga and Toronto that has a higher percentage of people that are immigrants and are of ethnic minorities. It's just simply not okay. I mean we posted it on The Gist on our Instagram and heard back from our Gisters. They were far and away saying good riddance. We're glad that this time is over with Don Cherry because of what he's been saying over the last five to 10 years.

LL: OK. Bruce Arthur, as Ellen said, this is hardly the first time we heard the tape, the first time he's made controversial or offensive comments. Why do you think it was this comment that finally did it?

BRUCE ARTHUR: It's a good question. Part of this is inevitable. They put an 85-year-old on television. An 85-year-old with very strong political views. An 85-year-old who's a Donald Trump fan. And no one for about the last almost 20 years probably has been able to control Don Cherry and what he says. The CBC basically gave up on that idea a long time ago. Sportsnet has carried on with that tradition of letting Don say what Don says. In terms of what changed, I think Canada has changed to a great degree. I think the world has changed. Like Don's bigotry used to be a kind of a hockey bigotry. It was chicken Swedes. It was untrustworthy Russians. It was even French Canadians. He expressed a very Anglo-Saxon, 'us against them', chirping bench to bench bigotry is how people saw it. And Swedes didn't see it that way and Russians didn't and French Canadians certainly didn't. But it was at least within those bounds which people thought was more acceptable. And when he did this and it's pretty clear there's there's a whole movement among certain conservatives in this country to relitigate what Don Cherry said, to make it seem as if he wasn't referring to immigrants or immigrants of colour. And that's I don't think that's going to go anywhere with anybody who's actually listened to what Don said, but when he did that, we've seen in the world now in a much more in your face way, what happens when you other-ise people of colour, when you other-ise immigrants in Europe and the United States and Canada itself isn't just an Anglo-Saxon country to the degree it used to be. We're changing as a country, too. And SportsNet finally made the calculation. I think there's also a, by the way, financial aspect of this. SportsNet has been trying to cut salary for a long time, but in terms of who hockey is trying to sell the game to, hockey needs new Canadians. And Don Cherry has been preaching to one part of the church of Hockey for a really long time. And this was probably the most exclusionary thing he'd ever said. And that's what ended his career.

LL: Bhupinder, I'm wondering what you think of what Bruce just said.

BHUPINDER HUNDAL: I think it's bang on. And, you know, another aspect of it as well is as Canada changes there is, I mean immigrants have been here for a very long time, you know. But I think the difference now is there is a second generation and a third generation who have a voice, who have a platform, who have the ability to speak out and and really be influencers. Where my parents, for example, they came here, they were the generation that were just trying to survive, make ends meet and had to turn the other cheek. They don't have the benefit and the privilege that I have right now to be able to have a platform and be able to speak out on these types of issues and call them out for what they are. So I think there is a difference there. You see a number of people like myself and many others in various sectors who have a voice and are using it now, more so than we've seen in the past.

LL: Bruce, I just want to ask you this, because Hockey Night in Canada was a CBC staple before it moved to SportsNet when Rogers acquired the NHL television rights in 2014. And as we know, this show still airs on the CBC in a sub licencing deal. Yesterday, the CBC said it respects SportsNet decision to let Cherry go, but I'm wondering if you think that is too little, too late on the CBC's part.

BRUCE ARTHUR: I think Don and the country could have been saved from this a long time ago by a lot of different people, by a lot of different executives, a lot of different producers. When Don Cherry started Coach's Corner, he didn't pick the topics and he didn't talk politics. And he he had to react to hockey news of the day. And he became so popular that he overrode that. And there were very few producers and very few executives. All the years of controversy, like none of this stuff is new. Don Cherry went on the Fifth Estate in 1990 and talked about how foreigners were stealing Canadian jobs. Canada first. I'm a new kind of nationalist. It was just different then. And no, there were some producers over there who reined him in and then they just kind of stopped. Like Don Cherry hasn't had a meaningful boss in terms of telling him what to do probably in almost 20 years. And again, they were they putting out an 85 year old man on television. If you had kept Don Cherry talking hockey and if he hadn't been allowed to talk about women in locker rooms, to talk about invading Iraq in 2003, how Canada should be a part of it, to talk about "you people that come here," then this could have been avoided. But the CBC for a very long time made a lot of money from Don Cherry and so did SportsNet for a time. And this is just the first time that someone decided he was more trouble than he's worth.

LL: Now, I should make it clear that we asked Don Cherry to join us today. We didn't hear back from him, but you heard some tape earlier from an interview he did with Toronto Station Newstalk1010 last night. He called the remarks one little slip, but he said he has no regrets, that he meant everybody when he was saying everybody should wear the poppy. And he said no one said anything to him about this until Sunday. That's when he first heard something about this. And I'm wondering, Ellen, if you think that somebody should have called him out sooner on this?

ELLEN HYSLOP: Definitely. I think even Ron MacLean on air should have called him out on it. I think that we were a little bit disappointed to see Ryan kind of give the thumbs up at the end of it and see him nod even while Don was talking. I think that we've all seen Ron give the exasperated eye roll before, and we've seen him come in on different topics that he doesn't necessarily want Don to go into and dive into. And so I think that potentially should have been stopped on air while everything was happening or there should have been some sort of a delay put on what Don was really saying. And then, of course, leaving the studio, that should have been something of discussion. I don't think that it was until the next day on Sunday that people were actually viewing what was happening and people started tweeting about it and posting on social media about how disappointed they were in those comments. So it definitely should have been spoken about on that Saturday night.

LL: Bhupinder was Ron MacLean's apology enough?

BHUPINDER HUNDAL: I think his apology was genuine. You know, I've been in a situation in the studio with Ron. I've had the fortunate privilege of being on air with him a couple of times and in Ron's defence, there is a lot that goes on when you're on live television, especially when you're, we're counting down to like 10 or 15 seconds left and he's got to wrap this thing up. You know, I haven't talked to Ron, but I'm pretty sure that he probably even never heard exactly what was being said because there's probably somebody talking in his ear. I mean I had this experience being with him on the air where I had answered a question and he kind of asked me the same question again. So because there's so much going on when you're the host and you're their traffic controller and you're basically the linchpin of everything. So I felt and knowing and having dealt with Ron a couple of times, I find him to be genuine. I've always found him to be open and inclusive. I think he really understood that right away that there was a problem and I think his apology was genuine and it was the right thing to do.

LL: Bruce, what do you think will happen to Ron MacLean now?

BRUCE ARTHUR: The questions can be whether Ron MacLean's apology saved his job, and I suspect it will. But I mean, Ron's been a part of this act for a very long time. He's a very good broadcaster. He's loved this job. It sounds like Don may not be happy that Ron apologized, but Ron got out ahead of this. Bhupinder is right, like when you, I'm not a broadcasting professional, but I've worked with a lot of them. It's not clear that Ron even heard what Don said, but Ron's job is to hear what Don says. And he blew it. I think he probably stays, but a lot of what's going to happen going forward at Hockey Night in Canada is going to not only involve the future of the program in terms of what kind of program they want to put on. It's going to involve money. Ever since Rogers signed the $5.2 billion dollar, the 12 year deal with the NHL, that deal has cost them money. It's been not even a loss leader. They cut an enormous amount of salary and talent last summer. Cutting Don Cherry's salary, that was the biggest salary at the network. It's possible that Ron MacLean becomes too expensive and too much trouble. My guess is that firing Don heads all this off at the past and that Ron MacLean goes forward. But the Ron and Don show has been going on for a long time. And as much as Ron did apologize, he knows who Don is just as much as the executives always did. None of this was a surprise, and it's just that they missed it in the moment. By the way, SportsNet posted the clip to their website and it stayed there overnight. No one said anything until the next day when it started to spread on social media, then it was all yanked.

LL: OK, let's just push it forward again to to the future of the program and the future of hockey. In its statement yesterday, Ellen, this is to you. SportsNet said, "Don is synonymous with hockey." If that is true, then where does hockey go from here?

ELLEN HYSLOP: So I think that Don was synonymous with hockey, and I think that for some people he might still be, but I think over the last five years, especially with the proliferation of social media and the ways in which audiences are consuming content and watching sports, it's really different than what it used to be than even myself growing up watching Hockey Night in Canada and watching games from start to finish. We have eight seconds, I think right now of actual capacity to pay attention to something and we're more highlight driven and it seems as though people are reverting to podcasts for different types of personalities that they're looking to in terms of analysts and they'll follow certain columnists that they really like. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see how Hockey Night in Canada and Sportsnet actually figure out what they're going to do on the digital side of things to continue to try to get millennials engaged and Gen Zs engaged in the same way that we were when we were growing up watching sports, because with all the different streaming services and Instagram and Twitter, sometimes that's the entire way that you're following a game. So that's going to be really interesting. And so that's why I say Don Cherry potentially was synonymous with hockey and not necessarily.

LL: They need to change the tense.

ELLEN HYSLOP: Exactly.

LL: Okay, Bhupinder with that same sentiment about trying to broaden the appeal of the sport. We know that there were a lot of people out there who are supporting Don Cherry and what he had to say. I'm wondering what that tells us about the sport and where it's going to go from here.

BHUPINDER HUNDAL: I think we have a long way to go. Hockey culture is going to have a struggle here moving forward because we are in an era where, you know, I mean, people want flamboyance. People want a personality, want players to show personality. Content digitally, as was just mentioned right now, is going to be a very important part. What role does the NHL and even SportsNet and others play in that. It's an entire different audience now than what was and I think a lot of that is I mean, hockey fans and people are going to be in for a little bit of a culture shock. And we also have to acknowledge and talk about race and how it plays in hockey. That's an important element that we've got to look at. Evander Kane, for example, came out earlier and talked about how there is a problem with regards to, you know, him doing things versus others doing things and how they're completely played out differently. So I think there's a lot of difficult conversations that need to happen, but it's a good thing too. It's going to help the game evolve. It's going to help the game move forward and it's going to bring more people into the tent.

LL: I'm curious Bhupinder what kind of reaction have you been seeing as a person of colour commenting on this in the South Asian community and beyond?

BHUPINDER HUNDAL: Well, I think it's that, hey, we just got outed or othered for not doing something where there wasn't the acknowledgement of the contributions that we made. You know, my first tweet and the initial reaction to Don's comments, I cited that there was an immigrant who came here before Don Cherry was even born, had no rights, not the right to vote, not the right to own property, not be able to have his family's here. And guess what? Still enlisted, still wanted to fight for the country. And, you know, there were people like that who paid the ultimate sacrifice. And it's I know it's all about respecting veterans and that's what Don is trying to do, but how was that respecting that particular veteran who paid the ultimate sacrifice but was an immigrant at one point in time and paid the ultimate sacrifice? So I think we have to take this opportunity to educate each other and understand each other's stories and understand that there is a history here and the contributions that immigrants actually have made that we also have to acknowledge if we are also going to call them out. And there's no problem with calling people out, but you've got to balance it out and make sure that you're acknowledging the contributions too.

LL: Bruce, we only have about 30 seconds left. What do you hope to see from Hockey Night in Canada now that Don Cherry's gone?

BRUCE ARTHUR: I think they're going to probably move forward. The problem they have is they have an aging audience. It's harder to engage millennials. The people who Don Cherry spoke to are still the core hockey viewing audience. So they're going have to find a way to create a more dynamic product, a more diverse product and I think they can do that. There are tremendous broadcasters out there who aren't on the plains, who aren't broadcasters of colour. But Hockey Night in Canada is going to continue to be less relevant than it ever has been because this is a more crowded environment than it ever has been in terms of media. And I think people tune in on Saturday night to see what happens without Don Cherry. After that, it's uncertain.

LL: OK. Thank you to all three of you for your time.

BHUPINDER HUNDAL: Thank you.

ELLEN HYSLOP: Thank you.

BRUCE ARTHUR: Thank you Laura.

LL: Bhupinder Hundal is a former broadcaster with Hockey Night in Canada in Punjabi, and he's now a senior producer with CBC Vancouver. Bruce Arthur is a sports columnist for The Toronto Star. And Ellen Hyslop is a co-founder of The Gist, an online sports outlet for women. We invited Sportsnet to take part in an interview today, but it said no one was available. Well, the CBC News is coming up next. Then.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from protests in Hong Kong]

LL: Footage posted on Facebook appears to show the moment when a police officer shoots a protester in Hong Kong. That young man is in critical condition and the chaos on the streets continues today. We'll find out what it will take to end the violence in our next half hour. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

“Tienanmen in slow motion”: Pro-democracy lawmaker fears for Hong Kong’s fate

Guests: Jennifer Creery, Claudia Mo, Gordon Chang

LL: Hello, I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

[Music: Theme]

LL: Still to come, a journalist spends four years travelling the world's oceans, investigating crimes committed on the high seas. What he finds is alarming. We'll hear how a void of policing has led to corruption, exploitation and death. But first, a call to end the chaos in Hong Kong.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: If there is still any wishful thinking that by escalating violence, the Hong Kong as their government, will yield to pressure, to satisfy the so-called political demands, I'm making this statement clear and loud here. That will not happen.

LL: Carrie Lam's message is clear. Hong Kong's chief executive is calling the demonstrators enemies of the people. The protests are into their sixth month, but the clashes and violence escalated on Monday. A protester was shot at close range by police and a man was set on fire after confronting demonstrators. Throughout the city police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds. Despite the escalating violence, the protests continued today with part of central Hong Kong's business district, the Chinese University campus, becoming battlegrounds between protesters and police. Jennifer Creery is the deputy editor at Hong Kong Free Press. She's in Hong Kong. Hello.

JENNIFER CREERY: Hi there.

LL: What was the scene like today in Hong Kong?

JENNIFER CREERY: Right. So today we saw a repetition of what we saw yesterday. So another day of unrest across Hong Kong minly localized within the Chinese University of Hong Kong, within university campuses, but also other universities. We also saw office workers come out in force in central Hong Kong, where protesters had erected makeshift barricades and other forms of roadblocks to try and stymie transport links and advancing police officers. So we saw multiple districts being affected by tear gas and other police operations. But the most shocking of all would have been the kind of the riot police inside university campuses, particularly Chinese University of Hong Kong.

LL: What was happening there?

JENNIFER CREERY: Riot police entered the university campus and fired multiple volleys of tear gas. We saw some pretty ugly clashes between students and police inside the campus itself, which is kind of unprecedented in this protest movement.

LL: Have the campus has been been seen as being off limits somehow?

JENNIFER CREERY: So mainly the protest movement has been characterized by kind of young protesters who take to the streets across Hong Kong, but you rarely see this kind of action within the campus itself. Now, the police have come under fire for entering what many have called, you know, private premises, but police have kind of pushed back earlier at a press conference earlier this afternoon saying that the police are entitled to do so if they think that unlawful activities are taking place within the campus itself.

LL: So what does that suggest to you, Jennifer?

JENNIFER CREERY: Well, certainly it's kind of following on from a trend of escalating violence and escalating action, particularly because this is the second day in a row that this has happened. So certainly, you know, we don't see any end to this anytime soon. And this is particularly worrying for the future and what is to kind of come next.

LL: I'm wondering why the recent surge in violence?

JENNIFER CREERY: Well, primarily yesterday, so yesterday morning, a young protester was shot with live ammunition by a police officer quite early on in the morning and suddenly galvanized people to kind of take to the streets. You know, earlier this morning we saw office workers joining the front lines behind protesters who were forming kind of a line of defence using umbrellas. So suddenly this is angered, angered people, angered members of the public. And certainly that anger is directed towards the police and their use of force.

LL: I'm wondering if there are attempts being made by both camps to stop further violence or whether we're just going to see more escalation?

JENNIFER CREERY: Well, certainly we've seen kind of escalating tactics. We had a police press conference a few weeks ago that the police have changed their tactics to kind of try and stop the process. That's when it first begins. So we see teargas being fired early on at the start of the protest. And of course, protesters using Molotov cocktails, which they've done so for the past few weeks. And it's been kind of a recurring trend. As few as you kind of any de escalating tactics, we're not seeing that quite yet. But suddenly those kind of slow escalation in these kind of acts of violence.

LL: And what about on the protesters side? Any attempts to be made to try to stop the violence? As we saw, one man was set on fire yesterday.

JENNIFER CREERY: Right. So we see certainly these kind of individual acts of violence and these kind of radical protesters, you could say. But suddenly they are isolated incidents. And it is part of a wider trend in terms of, you know, escalating violence on the part of the protesters.

LL: The two men that we spoke about, the pro democracy protester who was shot by the police at close range and the man who was set on fire, what condition are they in now?

JENNIFER CREERY: So they're in critical condition. So this is certainly very worrying and we're not sure what the outcome will be for both of them yet.

LL: Hong Kong's chief executive, as we said, Carrie Lam has said escalating violence will not help protesters achieve their goals. I'm wondering what stands out to you about her most recent statements.

JENNIFER CREERY: So the government has kind of remained resolute in pushing back against any of these kind of any of the protesters, but it's taken them a long time to react to the five core demands. There are five call demands put forward by protesters, one of which was the withdrawal of the extradition, though, that came months late. And the next demand, I guess, they've attempted to address is the investigation into alleged police misconduct since the start of the process. But they've refused to kind of establish an independent commission of inquiry to address that one concern. So suddenly the conquered government has been kind of very slow to react to these demands and this is certainly going to anger the public even more.

LL: Alright, Jennifer, thank you.

JENNIFER CREERY: Thank you.

LL: Jennifer Creery is the deputy editor of Hong Kong Free Press. She's in Hong Kong. Claudia Mo is a pro-democracy member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong. Hello.

CLAUDIA MO: Hello.

LL: Tell us what you've been seeing in Hong Kong today.

CLAUDIA MO: Well, Carrie Lam has been a liar and she's been lying her face off. She's only a puppet of her Beijing bosses. Only yesterday, she was saying that, repeating that the violence must stop. And today, they've got police marching into the university campuses en masse in Hong Kong, trying to provoke the students. If you're going in with such a high profile performance, you would expect the students to resist. And that's what they want. They almost like they want chaos in Hong Kong. The more chaos, the better. So that that that could. All those excuses could justify Carrie lam using up using some emergency law, which would give her sweeping powers, unlimited powers to do just anything she wants in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has been a rather authoritarian in a way. She rules Hong Kong. It's one person that's got the say over Hong Kong, she would appear.

LL: But you heard the police say that they were planning to do this sort of thing in order to stop the protests from getting violent in the first place.

CLAUDIA MO: Well, this violence has been escalating on both sides, but we must not forget the fact that the police are fully give the complete with deadly weapons. They can do anything they want. They can claim the police are getting emotional. They're supposed to be trained professionals. And we have to see that police brutality in Hong Kong has become so rampant, so unthinkable.

LL: But, Claudia, surely you don't think it helps the protesters cause to have things happen, such as happened yesterday when a gentleman who was confronting demonstrators was set on fire?

CLAUDIA MO: Well, that's absolutely horrifying. I mean, vandalism is one thing, setting somebody on fire ablaze is completely unacceptable. But then the young are completely angered by what's been happening, except this. Also, one thing I need the. The rest of the world to know, and that is day. How come they didn't manage to catch the perp? Who who actually did that? Who set the person on fire? Right. Because we have this suspicion. The police have acknowledged admitted that they planted undercover officers amongst the crowds to do anything they want, disguising as protesters, doing arson acts.

LL: You're not suggesting that this was an undercover agent who set the man on fire, are you?

CLAUDIA MO: Well, I'm not saying that as such. But then there's the suspicion until the person who did it has been caught. And as Jennifer was saying, I hope this is an isolated incident. Also, except the hate, the seething hate on the part of our young against the authorities, against the police have reached a point of no return that this reaching a tipping point. And we have to have something, a political solution to this mayhem in Hong Kong.

LL: You've used some strong language in recent days. You called the recent police actions, "almost like Tiananmen in slow motion." It's estimated thousands of people died over the protests in 1989. Do you really think Beijing would risk that kind of bloodshed?

CLAUDIA MO: Well, that's why it's being done in some bit by bit form and that's what I mean. I mean, the fact that the traffic police could feel quite so liberal about shooting the young man approaching him without any weapons in his hands. Right. And he would just shoot using live rounds. Now, this could sum up what's the mood in Hong Kong is the police are completely out of control, the police aggressiveness.

LL: But still.

CLAUDIA MO: And I'm not alone. I'm not alone having that sort of Tiananmen Square feeling. This is not exclusive, because we feel that the Hong Kong police is now behaving like they are the proxy for the Chinese army that the people here are the enemies.

LL: But you're not seeing thousands die.

CLAUDIA MO: Well, not thousands, but that's not what people are expecting either, right? I did say they're dealing this and this bit by bit form. That's what I mean by not having violence numbers.

LL: Carrie Lam has denounced the protesters as rioters and I'm wondering, when you see protesters lighting counter protesters on fire, throwing bricks, barricade roads, wearing masks, do you worry that it actually gives police a pretext to use force?

CLAUDIA MO: They shouldn't be using that much force. I mean vandalism or even arson, right, i's not to be bound agreeable, but then you have to try to understand our young's desperation. They think this is the last cause and they feel that they have to fight on. They're prepared to die for it as well. So with that sort of slogan, if you burn, if we burn, you burn with us, they say. You just don't know how to appease the young, but then Carrie Lam is the root cause of all this problem. As long as she, I mean, if only she could have put up a nice presentation telling the young that she understands that she would try to talk to Beijing, and that's something that would amount to a political solution. Right?

LL: I'm just wondering, as a well-known pro-democracy voice in Hong Kong, do you have any concerns about your own freedom and safety?

CLAUDIA MO: I couldn't care that much about myself. I mean, personally, I'm ancient. I'm 62 and my children are all grown up and I have no worries in the world otherwise. But I suspect to my political freedoms might be restricted in due cause.

LL: Your political freedoms, do you suspect you may be detained?

CLAUDIA MO: Well the right to vote and the right to stand in an election, the right to voice my opinions, free speech, free press, that's all those freedoms, they're taking them away again, bit by bit as Chris Patten, our last colonial governor, predicted a long time ago.

LL: Claudia Mo, we will leave it there. Thank you.

CLAUDIA MO: Thank you.

LL: Claudia Mo is a pro-democracy member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council and we reached her in Hong Kong. As clashes become more violent, there are calls for the international community to take a stronger stand. Gordon Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. He's in Bedminster, New Jersey. Hello.

GORDON CHANG: Hello Laura. Thank you.

LL: What do you think of how the international community has responded to these protests?

GORDON CHANG: I think the response certainly has been tepid, especially when we see what is occurring in Hong Kong. The use of deadly force in circumstances where it is not warranted, I think might actually mobilize countries. But at this time, Americans and others have not, I think, responded with the appropriate words.

LL: If you had the ear of the U.S. president, Donald Trump, what would you tell him to do?

GORDON CHANG: The first thing I think President Trump should do is to speak in Reagan-esque terms about what is occurring in Hong Kong. He has since August talked about Hong Kong and a humane solution. In October, he was much more explicit about linking a possibility of a trade agreement to a resolution in Hong Kong. But nonetheless, we need to hear him speak in clear tones. But also, I think the United States needs to recognize the reality that China is actually controlling Hong Kong and therefore, the exemptions in U.S. law for Hong Kong should be repealed immediately, largely because those exemptions are premised on the notion that Hong Kong is run autonomously. And as we have seen over the last months, it clearly is not whether or not I mean, when you talk about ending the exemptions in practical terms, the sanctions that apply to China, which do not apply to Hong Kong need to be repealed, and that will eliminate technology flows and others that are important for Chinese prosperity. China's been using Hong Kong as a conduit. That has to end now, especially because the base, the factual basis on which those exemptions were first put in place are no longer true.

LL: But what about Canada? What can a smaller country like Canada do to exert pressure?

GORDON CHANG: Countries like Canada have of course, their own issues with China. You have the two Michaels being detained in suspicious circumstances. And one former diplomat. The other thing is, of course, China has been blocking imports of Canadian canola and other commodities. I think it's time for Prime Minister Trudeau to get engaged in this and at some point.

LL: Engage in what sense? You know we've had our ambassador involved in China.

GORDON CHANG: Canada's words on China leave much to be desired, as do American words as I pointed out. But countries, I think, are going to have to downgrade relations with China as China continues to use force in Hong Kong and do things which the international community opposes. This is going to be a departure from four or five decades of engagement with China, but we've got to understand that the regime there is not legitimate in many ways and therefore, I think the world needs to recognize that by downgrading relations.

LL: What does that mean though? Especially for Canada, which is already in this tense diplomatic and trade relationship. You already mentioned the detention of two Canadians, various trade disruption. What do you mean when you say downgrade relations?

GORDON CHANG: I think that the United States, Canada and other nations should be, for instance, withdrawing diplomats from China. They should be expelling Chinese diplomats in their country. And it's not as if they don't have reasons independent of Hong Kong to do this. Countries have not moved with robustness against inappropriate Chinese activities. My country has not done that either.

LL: How likely do you think it is that your advice would be followed?

GORDON CHANG: Well, right now, of course not. But also, I think that the world is coming to a different appreciation of China. People are starting to understand how malign an actor it is. And we very well may be approaching a tipping point. So what appears right now to be an impossible course of action could very well become the more probable one. Now, we've seen this in the past as paradigms have shifted. I think that they will shift again in large. Because China will drive this try and will do things that the international community abhors. And as people's change opinions, the policies will have to change. We've got to understand that China, for instance, is detaining people more than a million people based solely on their ethnicity and their religion. This is horrific. This echoes the worst actions of the 20th century and the international community hasn't done very much about it. So when we're talking about Hong Kong, this is very well could be the tipping point for people to change their views and change their policies about China.

LL: Claudia Mo, you were listening to her, she called this almost like Tiananmen in slow motion. I'm wondering what you think of that characterization.

GORDON CHANG: I wouldn't use that characterisation, but it's very different. What you had in 1989 in China was the formal deployment of the People's Liberation Army and the deliberate slaughter of people in China. The leader at the time wanted to teach the Chinese people and the world a lesson that the party was willing to kill in great numbers. What we're seeing in Hong Kong is different. There are, in all probability, Chinese troops or Chinese police who are active on the streets of Hong Kong, but in the garb of Hong Kong police. So China is there. This is a very different type of response to an unhappy population. The Tiananmen analogy is not the one that I would use, as I mentioned.

LL: What do you think Beijing will do next?

GORDON CHANG: I think Beijing will take actions that will provoke the people of Hong Kong. The question is whether China is doing this deliberately, as Claudia Mo intimated, or whether they are just being oblivious. And either interpretation is defensible at this time. But clearly what Beijing is doing is every time that you see sort of the protests, fatigue among the general population, Hong Kong, Beijing will do something directly or indirectly that will enrage people. And of course, we saw that yesterday, Monday, with the shooting of an unarmed protester. But also we saw that with Carrie Lam's deliberately provocative language of enemy of the people, which is Cultural Revolution speak. People in Hong Kong will abhor that as they use it, as is clear from the activities today in Central Asia. So, you know, I think that essentially this will continue for a very long time and we are not going to see an end to the protests.

LL: So how do you expect the situation in Hong Kong to come to an end? Do you think we're looking at years of protests, a standoff that lasts forever?

GORDON CHANG: We could have protests that last for years. You know, it's not entirely possible, impossible for the people in Hong Kong to outlast China, especially because you have a couple of things going on. One of them is that China's got a number of problems of its own in the history of Chinese regimes have unravelled from the outside in, including the last imperial dynasty, the Cheng's. And you could very well see does occur this time as well as Beijing is unable to hold on to Hong Kong. I'm not saying that's probable. I am saying it's possible. People in Hong Kong now across society have taken a view that they're as Claudia Mo said, they're taking a last stand for their homes. And in that type of situation where you have a determined population, they can last a very long time, especially when China does things which inflames the people. And it does so periodically.

LL: Gordon Chang, thank you.

GORDON CHANG: Thank you very mucch Laura.

LL: Gordon Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. We reached him in Bedminster, New Jersey.

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LL: Coming up in our next half hour.

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VOICE: Usually the men and some of them are boys, we interviewed some as young as 13, are working 20 hour days, often six days a week. So pretty perilous, brutal conditions. [.

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LL: Those men and boys are slave labour on often filthy rat-infested fishing boats. Journalist Ian Urbina discusses his four year investigation into the outlaw oceans in about 90 seconds. I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current.

[Music]

Your seafood dinner could be tied to slavery on fishing vessels, says journalist

Guests: Ian Urbina, Karsten von Hoesslin

LL: I'm Laura Lynch, and you're listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: I was sitting at a karaoke bar. I was looking for a girl to hang out with. Put simply, I was looking for a prostitute. A face of a woman, a girl I bought, I don't know who she is. That is the last thing I remember.

LL: Asorasak Thamma was in his native Thailand when he was drugged and kidnapped online.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: When I woke up, I felt the bedroom shake. So I went outside and saw see when I woke up. I was already on a boat for the next one or two months. We were at sea. Where would you go? We couldn't flee since we were in the middle of the sea on the boat. We worked very hard. Sometimes we could only sleep for an hour. Then we would wake up and get back to work. The crew were beaten and scolded by the crew master. At sea, he's the boss. Sometimes it was his bare hands that didn't hurt too much, but the iron rod, it's very painful. Flesh and iron, you know, they're different.

LL: Asorasak Thamma was enslaved on a fishing boat in 2011. He told his story to New York Times journalist Ian Urbina as part of an investigative series. Urbina spent four years travelling the world's oceans investigating lawlessness in the maritime world. He found stories of slavery, piracy and murder. Atrocities committed with impunity because they were committed at sea, hidden from public scrutiny. Ian Urbina's book is called The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier. And he's with me from Washington, DC. Hello.

IAN URBINA: Hi there.

LL: How would you describe the scale of the problem you discovered after investigating criminal acts happening at sea?

IAN URBINA: I describe the scale as shockingly broad and in some ways far broader than we initially expected in terms of the diversity of lawlessness out there. Not all of it bad behaviour, but most of it extralegal behaviour.

LL: Well, let's start with this then. Tell me the story of Eril Andrade. Who was he?

IAN URBINA: So Eril Andrade was a young man from the Philippines. He was very poor and in need of work, and heard through a relative of an opportunity to work on a Taiwanese tuna longliner. He heard by way of what's called a manning agency —which is one of these middlemen firms that specialize in recruiting the workers for these ships and then handling the logistics, typically their airfare and the money they have to put up front to get the job and then the basics of getting their wages wired back to their family, etc. That's what manning agencies are supposed to do. In Eril Andrade's case, though, that's not what the manning agency did. And at the end of the Eril Andrade story, he left and mysteriously died at sea and came back in a coffin to his family, missing several organs.

LL: So what happened? What did you learn about the agencies that hire people like Eril Andrade?

IAN URBINA: I learned that, you know, many of them are good and do what they advertise, but as many are pretty sketchy outfits, these are sort of P.O. box companies. In this case, the company that recruited Eril was called 123 Step Up Marine, based in Singapore. And so the pattern here was that they often recruit these guys, the workers have to put up a fair amount of money to get the job in the first place. The wages and the jobs are dirt poor, even on paper. And then when they arrive on the ship, usually the conditions are far worse than advertised. And then the deductions start rolling in, sort of these hidden expenses that are taken off of their wages. When things go awry, a guy gets hurt, he gets killed. These manning agencies often do not help the family figure out what happened, or get the body back, or get the individual back. And if the workers are suffering abuse and want to leave their contract early, often the manning agencies keep their entire wages. And so for all of these reasons, it's a pretty abusive system.

LL: So what happened to Eril Andrade?

IAN URBINA: It's unclear. The going theory, there was a first autopsy done that sort of posited very thinly that he had died of a heart attack. The second autopsy that was done in the Philippines revealed that he was missing several organs and he had likely not suffered a heart attack, but sort of some sort of crushing injury. The speculation, among other men who were on his ship and other ships was that he was beaten to death, or he had fallen from a high place and suffered traumatic injuries. And on the inbound from any of these guys, Eril included, it's very much like a trafficking pipeline that just happens to be incorporated. So these men, when they are recruited into this work, once they're en route, they're not allowed to sort of U-turn and change their mind. In the case of Eril, he was kept in an apartment with an armed guard at the door, in Singapore until he could be dispatched to Cape Town, where he was first aboard his ship.

LL: Okay. He actually signed up for this work, there are others who don't. You also tell the story of Lang Long, who's a Cambodian migrant who wound up working as a slave on a fishing boat in the South China Sea. How did that happen?

Yes, so much like, you know, Asorasak or as you mentioned, the case of Lang Long, you know, in Thailand and the Pacific, there's a pretty robust pipeline of workers, migrant, undocumented, often debt bonded workers who are coming from Louse, Cambodia and Myanmar. Typically, they're recruited on the pretext that that they're headed for a construction job, a better-paying, land-based construction job. But en route, they usually figure out that that's not where they're destined. They end up at the port. They get marched up onto the vessel. Again, you know, bear in mind, many of these guys are not literate. They don't speak Thai. This is the first time they've ever sort of tried to go after a job across the border. So they're sometimes easily duped. In the case of Lang Long, he ended up on a ship, went off to sea, suffered quite a bit and attempted to escape while at sea. He jumped overboard and tried to swim to a supply vessel. They caught him, brought him back, and from then forward he was shackled by the neck when he was not working and was sold boat-to-boat, over the course of two and a half years. Ultimately, a anti-trafficking advocate spotted him, raised the funds to purchase him back from the captain who had sort of a debt bondage ownership over him, and Lang Long was rescued, brought to shore. And we interviewed him a couple weeks after that and revealed his story.

LL: What kind of condition was he in?

IAN URBINA: He was sold across three different boats. You know, he was shackled. He was routinely beaten. These boats in general are pretty unhygienic places, to put it mildly, roaches and rat-infested workplaces. Usually the men and some of them are boys, we interviewed some as young as 13, are working 20 hour days, often six days a week. So pretty perilous, brutal conditions.

LL: Why is this happening? What is driving that demand for the workers on the fishing boats?

IAN URBINA: So fishing is a pretty low-margin industry. So it's gotten even worse as near-shore stocks have been depleted. And so the economics of fishing, especially in a place like Thailand where there are too many boats, they're under-automated in the water. And so these boats have to go very far away. And the economics just don't make sense. So captains and companies generally are finding other ways to save money. And the captains generally rely on, you know, sort of trafficked, cheaper migrant workers. And in some cases, they just simply opt not to pay them at all. And if a captain finds himself in a bind, where within two hours he needs to leave, or the next day he need to leave, and he's down a man or two. He will put the word out, typically to a labour broker, often tied to karaoke bars or brothels, that he's desperate for a man — could someone round up a guy quick? And that's usually the scenario in which you have people like Asorasak being shanghaied or drugged at a bar, and essentially kidnapped and put on the ship.

LL: Do these workers have any protections?

IAN URBINA: It varies. I mean, this is abroad. You know, Thailand is not distinct. You'll find, you know, this sort of sea slavery off the coast of Ghana, off the coast of New Zealand, off the coast of the Falkland Islands, Malvinas Islands. In the case of of Thailand, it's complicated. I mean, might foreign workers in Thailand still are not allowed to unionize? They rarely have translators or advocates who can represent them. And there are huge numbers of them. And so while the government recently has tried to give them identity cards and has tried to implement at sea inspections on the boats and in port, so far the efforts have not been super effective because they're still not very good at investigating the actual conditions on these ships.

LL: But are there any United Nations agreements or human rights protections that these people could use?

IAN URBINA: Sure. I mean, there are a lot of, there are a fair number of great laws on the books. I mean, the challenge with the offshore realm, though, is enforcement. Right. So, I mean, especially if you're talking about high seas. But even in national waters, laws are only as good as their enforcement. And if there are no inspectors or spot checks are police, to really make those laws have teeth, then they're as good as not existing. And in Thailand, there is a really robust Navy sort of engagement on this. But again, they're not very good at enforcing it. They don't have this sort of experience with doing proper interviews when they board these ships. They don't have the translators, for example, that they need on hand and working for the government to talk with the guys in a way that that trust is built. So they're often relying on the boatswain, which is sort of the the crew master, who's the one guy on many of these ships who speaks both Thai and the language of the crew. And that's also the one person who's doing the abusing. So there are real fundamental flaws in how they attempt to enforce these laws. But but in other countries, there isn't even the attempt to enforce many of the laws that exist out there.

LL: Some of the loopholes, though, in maritime law are actually being used by people who are trying to help other people. Tell me about Rebecca Gomperts.

IAN URBINA: So Rebecca Gomperts is a young woman, Dutch citizen, gynaecologic doctor. She used to work for Greenpeace. She had witnessed a number of things as a Greenpeace doctor that disturbed her. And she created her own organization called Women on Waves. This is an organization that brings a ship or in some cases a sailing vessel to the coast of shores where abortion is illegal and often dangerous for women and girls. And Rebecca and her crew, other health care providers, sort of quietly international waters surreptitiously plug into a sort of underground network of doctors who are aware of a number of women and girls in need of access to abortion. And they take these females out to international waters where the law switches over from that of the. So in this case, when we embedded, it was Mexico. So that of the Mexican government doesn't apply, but rather the law that applies is that of the flag that the ship flies. And in her case, she has an Austrian flag. And so abortion is legal and she administers a medical abortion. So pills and all all the sort of requisite counselling that goes with such a engagement. And then she quietly delivers the women and girls back to shore. And once their anonymity is secured, she usually holds a press conference to sort of stoke a political debate about the dire need for this service.

LL: And when you when you were embedded, what did you witness? What was she up against in Mexico?

IAN URBINA: We struggled to get out of port initially and the government tried every tactic they could. Once they had a suspicion about what she was up to to block her administratively, she's pretty experienced at this and knows what they'll attempt. You know, claiming that the crew hadn't entered the country legally, claiming that the ship was not the right type of vessel to bring non work working members aboard. You know, various tactics that they'll try to to use. And then subsequently to her press conference, she was then expelled from the country, which is sort of the norm.

LL: You have spent years at sea investigating primarily slavery, murder, piracy. I'm wondering what toll the project took on you personally.

IAN URBINA: I don't know. I honestly, you know better to ask my 15 year old son and my wife that question. I don't know if I have a perspective on it. I mean, I think one thing I do feel like is when you report on this kind of stuff, you feel a certain guilt. It captures you in a in a certain way in which you feel like you see bad things out there and you get back home to your very comfortable existence and it motivates you to hurry up and get back out there and continue on the project, because you know all too well about what other people are dealing with in a day to day existence and what you're not dealing with. And that, I think, is distinct from other type of reporting I've done and it's probably the explanation for why I'm still doing it five years later when I was supposed to rotate off the topic about two years in. It is a sort of exhausting form of reporting. It's not beat reporting where you do it mostly by phone. You know, this is a pretty difficult space to be working in on these ships, especially if you're there for months on end.

LL: Well, yeah. You found yourself in some very dangerous situations. I'm wondering if there's ever a moment when you thought to yourself, what am I doing here?

IAN URBINA: There were I mean, the danger question is a legitimate question. And I always feel a little bit queasy about answering it in light of the dangers. I'm seeing others face day to day because I get to leave. I have an American passport, I have money. You know, I I have these luxuries that make my dangerous pale in comparison to even the dangers faced by the sources and other reporters who are in country and have to stay there when I pull out. But yeah, there were multiple times when I thought I had pushed things too far and I might pay a severe price for it. And truth be told, I was most worried about that because I bring people with me and they trust me to deliver them back to shore in, you know, alive. And the fact that I had that trust and now we were in a deadly, potentially deadly situation worried me more than was I going to come out the other side. How was I going to answer to or have someone else on my behalf, answer to my photographer's parents if he didn't make it back to shore? But yeah, there were, you know, in Borneo and Somalia and a couple of places we got stuck in very potentially violent situations.

LL: But you made it out, obviously.

IAN URBINA: I did. Yeah.

LL: Ian, are you done with this or are you planning to keep going with this?

IAN URBINA: Yeah, I'm actually not done. I just committed to another five years of this reporting. So I'm just recently launched on a next round of similar reporting around the world.

LL: Well, then all I can say is be careful.

IAN URBINA: I will.

LL: Thank you very much.

IAN URBINA: Thank you.

LL: Ian Urbina is an investigative journalist and the author of The Outlaw Ocean. We reached him in Washington, DC. Karsten von Hoesslin knows the criminal culture of the ocean all too well. It is his job to investigate some of the horrors Ian Urbina has just been telling us about. Karsten von Hoesslin is a maritime detective. And we've reached him at his home in Vernon, British Columbia. Hello.

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Good morning. Hi, Laura. How are you?

LL: Fine, thanks. In talking to Ian Urbina, I get a sense of the ocean is as kind of this totally lawless place. How would you describe it?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Yes, it's I mean, absolutely hits the nail on the head. And as Ian pointed out, it's it's the perfect nexus for a place to commit transnational organized crime. And very rarely do you see whether it's slavery or it's piracy, very rarely do you see just one criminal act being committed. It's typically in combination of of others in a cluster format.

LL: So then how do you even begin to investigate a cold case at sea?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Well, it's extremely challenging and it all begins with with what type of evidence you can collect and ultimately finding witnesses, finding reliable sources. Utilizing social media is a big bonus because a lot of the fishermen are active on social media. Their privacy settings on Facebook are quite low and in that scenario, you actually can find a lot. But the problem is there is a lot of repression as well. A lot of fishing companies will confiscate phones. They will be very strict on what people can share and they do try to control that. And then it all comes even down to the fishing vessels themselves. There will be limited access. There will be one computer with an email that belongs to the captain, which the shipping company checks. So there's always eyes on everyone when they're at sea.

LL: Right. Because detectives, normally they they use shoe leather, as we say there. They're out on pounding the streets, talking to witnesses. How do you do that with ships who may be at sea? As you say, crews who may be very reluctant to talk. Aside from social media, I don't imagine this is very easy.

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Well, it is. It's definitely a challenge because you want to gain their trust, but ultimately, as a source, you want to ensure that they are protected because they themselves are exposing themselves to tremendous risk by by coming out and by even just explaining what happened at sea and detailing accounts of various crimes that they witness. And it's quite challenging because you do have to approach with almost a cover identity as a way to get them to speak in. And some of the cases I've investigated, it's very much been under the guise of the Manning agency or an employer that wants to bring on someone who's a suspect. And so my background is in human intelligence and infiltrating organized crime groups and bringing on assets. And, you know, that has to that methodology almost has to be applied to witnesses as well, so long as you keep them safe.

LL: Let's look at one of the cases that you worked on, the disappearance of Keith Davis. Who was Keith Davis?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Keith Davis is was an American fisheries observer, and he had a background in marine biology, had a very good heart. He was quite the activist about conserving the oceans, ensuring that fishing was ethically sourced, ensuring there was no marine pollution and he'd worked abroad a number of different reefers, which are effectively the supply vessels that supply out to the long liners that fish on the oceans. It's kind of like a hub ship. And his job was to monitor the amount of fish and the type of fish that came onto those vessels. Like all fisheries observers, they observed quite a tremendous amount of organized crime or illegal fishing, or maybe they see other elements. Some observers I've spoken to have recorded strange packaging that almost looked like narcotics and heroin, to be specific. Others have recalled numerous instances where there were way too many fish collected or, for example, fish that were listed as tuna were, in fact, sharks. And it's completely unregulated out there. And Keith was one of these officers without any gun or a badge whose job it was to make sure that everyone was being transparent on the high seas.

LL: So what do you think happened to him?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Well, it's become pretty clear that Keith observed something that cost him his life. And ultimately, it comes down to a human trafficking or migrant smuggling scheme that is run through China, where they're effectively bringing people onboard these reefers and then transferring them onto the smaller long liners to ferry them across the Atlantic Ocean and as well as the Pacific Ocean. In this case was the Pacific Ocean to South America, where they then would receive if they're Chinese nationals, they would receive Japanese or South Korean passports to allow them easier access to the United States and Canada. So effectively, Keith had uncovered a a human smuggling ring that was bringing nationals illegally to the United States and Canada.

LL: So if he if he knew all of that and you've seen evidence of that, I know you've seen evidence of what information he had, why can't you prove that that is the reason he disappeared?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Well, it's not so much what I can prove. I think the really frustrating and agonizing part is, is the fact that the evidence is compelling. It's why can the case be picked up and why can't we have an prosecution? And in this case, it's it's additionally frustrating because Keith was a U.S. national. Previous cases that I'd worked involved nationals from countries such as Somalia or India or Pakistan or Iran. And you'd think that the United States had a more robust policy in terms of investigating cases involving their nationals, but sadly, in this case, the FBI, which is the lead agency really hasn't done anything. And I think in some ways the case is extremely overwhelming because they simply don't understand that, wait a minute, this is illegal fishing or is this trafficking? This is a little bit over our head. Unfortunately, it's not being followed through.

LL: You presented your evidence to the FBI?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Oh, absolutely. The evidence has been put forward to the FBI as well as to the United States Coast Guard Investigative Service. And it's been passed along to other agencies as well.

LL: And what have they said to you?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Well, they said it's a relatively complicated case. We will continue to investigate. But in this particular instance, Keith Davis was on a Panama flight vessel which ultimately has that state authority. And the Panamanian government, when they looked into this, effectively said this was an accident. He fell overboard or something happened. It was an accident and therefore, we will not continue to investigate.

LL: So would you draw a direct line here between human migration and the seafood that ends up on my plate?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: In this particular case, yes, I would say that whether it's more of the slavery element or the forced labour element that Urbina has documented so well, or whether it's transnational crime and migrant smuggling operations, they are effectively utilizing the fishing sector for that benefit. They're utilizing the grey areas, the lack of regulations, or at least a lack of enforcement at the United Nations level. And that's allowing them to accomplish their goals, which is in this case smuggling individuals. And it all is connected to the seafood on our plates.

LL: But even if cases are solved and you have solved cases in the past, often the perpetrators aren't actually brought to justice. Why not?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: I would say there's a lack of will on behalf of flag states. The number of times I've been I've investigated Chinese suspects, for example, even though they were on Chinese flagged vessels or Taiwanese flagged vessels to state or the government of China would say this didn't happen on our soil, so we're not interested. Corruption is a significant issue. Back in the days when I would investigate kidnapping cases in the Philippines, I would see the Abu Sayyaf group, which is a terrorist group, kidnap individuals and half of that ransom actually go to the Philippine police. In Indonesia I would investigate ships that were hijacked and had gone missing so their fuel in their cargo would be stolen and when I approach Interpol about it, they would say you have to report it to the Indonesian authorities. Well, it was the Indonesian navy that was actually behind the hijackings. So corruption plays a significant role as well that limits the ability to enforce these laws.

LL: Karsten, given all of the frustrations, why keep going?

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: It's exactly what Ian Urbina alluded to. It's very hard once you step foot in there and you do have that safety of exiting again and you have that luxury of going home and leaving that scene. But when you see what people are enduring and the fact that that is their repetitive life, almost like Groundhog Day, it's very hard to give up on that. And and whether or not you can actually secure a prosecution or an official investigation, the fact that you can continue and raise awareness is vital so that at least people are aware of what the implication is, that's linked to their seafood on their plate.

LL: Well I wish you good luck in your investigations at sea. Thank you for your time.

KARSTEN VON HOESSLIN: Thank you very much, Laura.

LL: Karsten von Hoesslin is a maritime investigator. We reached him in Vernon, B.C.. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One. Q is up next. Anthony Daniels has played the Droid C-3PO in the Star Wars films for over 40 years. He has a new book out title,d I Am C-3PO, about his history with the part. Now, earlier in the show, we were talking about the comments Don Cherry made on Hockey Night in Canada, comments that got him fired. There is another version of Hockey Night in Canada that's on the air at the same time that some people might not know about. It's called Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi. Here is just a little bit of what that broadcast sounded like on Saturday when the Calgary Flames tied it up against the St. Louis Blues late in the third period. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

[Clip of Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi]

[Music: Theme]

Nov. 12, 2019 episode transcript

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