Supri, an Indonesian worker, has searing memories of his three and a half months aboard a Taiwan-based tuna fishing vessel in 2019: “I prayed to God that I would survive,” he says, describing how he was singled out for abuse by the ship’s captain, presumably because Supri was new to the crew.

Supri, who like many Indonesians has only one name, says in a phone interview with National Geographic that the captain attacked him five times. The assaults, Supri says, included his being locked in a freezer when he was still wet from having taken a shower, and being beaten, sprayed in the face with a hose, and shocked with an electric stun gun.

He recalls that after about 15 minutes of