The crew of the Naham 3 was held hostage by Somali pirates for nearly five years. MichaelSctMoore, who was also captured, reconnects with three of the men he met during the harrowing experience.
Em Phumanny comes from the lush province of Kampong Chhnang, north of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. He’s thirty-nine years old, a new father, and now lives on the outskirts of the city for the sake of a job in a Chinese garment factory. A decade ago, he worked on his parents’ farm, growing chilies and other vegetables. But he didn’t like the work, and he wanted to see the world. He heard that a local recruitment agency needed seafarers.
In October, 2016, the twenty-six surviving Naham 3 crew members were freed, and I flew to Nairobi to see them. They were frail, exhausted, and eager to be reunited with their families. I sensed that there was more to their individual stories than I could learn in those few days. During our time in captivity, I gathered that some of them had wound up on the Naham 3 as a result of labor trafficking.
I didn’t realize the depth of the malfeasance until they explained it to me in detail. Phumanny and the other Cambodians were caught in a complex scam involving a Taiwanese-owned recruitment firm called Giant Ocean.
Tola added that Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor “abused its power” by granting a series of licenses around 2010 to recruiting agents who shipped workers to nations, like Mauritius, with no labor agreements to protect Cambodian fishermen. “In one of [these] cases, the Giant Ocean company got a license from the Ministry of Labor,” Tola said. “They placed the people on the fishing boats without wage payments, without proper health care—just put the people into the slave world.
The second time he lost his temper—in an argument with his sister over some unwashed dishes, in 2017—Koem Hen borrowed money from his mother and drove off on his moped. He visited Sosan, his former fellow-hostage, settled in Kampong Chhnang, and later married the sister of Sosan’s wife. “I didn’t have any other place to live,” he said. Koem Hen now works for a Japanese construction firm, building and fixing local roads. But he still grows impatient with his wife. He gave a sad smile.
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