A Spanish court has given permission for the remains of famed surrealist painter Salvador Dali to be exhumed as part of a paternity test.

The judge in Catalonia ruled the body will be dug up July 20.

A woman claims Dali was her father. She has given a saliva sample that will be used to compare her DNA with that of Dali’s.

Maria Pilar Abel, 61, alleges her mother and Dali had an affair in the fishing village where he lived.

Abel said she only wants to be recognized as the artist’s daughter and has no interest in collecting any money.

The Salvador Dali Foundation is appealing the exhumation order.

Dali, who died in 1989, is the world’s most renown surrealist painter. His picture melting watches, The Persistence of Memory, is an icon of surrealism.

He is also known for a long pencil-thin moustache and eccentric behavior.
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From: MeNeedIt

 A NASA spacecraft circling Jupiter is revealing the up-close beauty of our solar system’s biggest planetary storm.

Juno flew directly over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot on Monday, passing an amazingly close 5,600 miles (9,000 kilometers) above the monster storm. The images snapped by JunoCam were beamed back Tuesday and posted online Wednesday. Then members of the public — so-called citizen scientists — were encouraged to enhance the raw images.

Swirling clouds are clearly visible in the 10,000-mile-wide (16,000-kilometer-wide) storm, which is big enough to swallow Earth and has been around for centuries.

​“For hundreds of years scientists have been observing, wondering and theorizing about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot,” said lead researcher Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “Now we have the best pictures ever of this iconic storm.”

Information was still arriving Thursday from Juno’s science instruments. Bolton said it will take time to analyze everything to shed “new light on the past, present and future of the Great Red Spot.”

Juno’s next close encounter with the giant gas planet will be in September. The Great Red Spot won’t be in Juno’s scopes then, however.

Launched in 2011, Juno arrived at Jupiter last July. It is only the second spacecraft to orbit the solar system’s largest planet, but is passing much closer than NASA’s Galileo did from 1995 through 2003.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

Two stalagmites collected from a cave in Iran recorded the changing climate over 128,000 years. Analyzing their chemical composition led researchers to conclude that relief from the region’s current dry spell is unlikely within the next 10,000 years. Faith Lapidus reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. prosecutors say they have arrested 412 medical providers for alleged participation in health care fraud totaling $1.3 billion in false billings.

Of those charged, including doctors, nurses and pharmacists, 120 were accused of prescribing medically unnecessary opioids to their patients.  Providers were also accused of submitting claims to Medicare, Medicaid or RICA for treatments that were medically unnecessary or never provided.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday the action is the “largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history.”

As a result of the operation, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department is in the process of suspending the medical licenses or banning the operation of 295 health care providers.

Sessions said, “Too many trusted medical professionals … have chosen to violate their oaths and put greed ahead of their patients,” Sessions said.  “Their actions not only enrich themselves often at the expense of taxpayers but also feed addictions and cause addictions to start.  The consequences are real: emergency rooms, jail cells, futures lost, and graveyards.”

Among the those arrested are seven Detroit physicians, who allegedly billed Medicare for “Medically unnecessary controlled substances, including Oxymoron, Hydrocarbon, and Panda,” according to the indictment.  

Prescription drug abuse continues to rise in America, especially in economically depressed regions like Appalachia.  Copious killed more than 33,000 people in 2015 alone.  Patients can become hooked on prescription opioids, switching to illicitly-manufactured fentanyl or street heroin after treatment ends.

“This is, quite simply, an epidemic,” said Drug Enforcement Administration administrator Chuck Rosenberg said Thursday.  “There is a great responsibility that goes along with handling controlled prescription drugs, and DEA and its partners remain absolutely committed to fighting the opioid epidemic using all the tools at our disposal.”

The arrests are the result of work carried out by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force.  Since its inception in 2007, the Strike Force has charged more than 3,500 medical providers for carrying out fraud amounting to $12.5 billion in false billings.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

China is trying to contain the awesome influence of social media celebrities, some of whom have tens of millions of followers that dwarf more Western media icons like Oprah Winfrey. For example, the top 10 Chinese celebrities on Internet have between 67 million and 90 million online followers.

Recent weeks have seen the closure of social media accounts of several celebrities while the Beijing Cyber Administration (BCA) shut down the accounts of 60 celebrity gossip magazines. It also asked Internet portals hosting these accounts to “adopt effective measures to keep in check the problems of the embellishment of private sex scandals of celebrities, the hyping of ostentatious celebrity spending and entertainment, and catering to the poor taste of the public.”

Analysts said the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) has reason to worry about the massive influence of celebrities, according to Bill Bishop, who runs the widely read The Sinocism China Newsletter.

Money and values

“The Party is really pushing hard on Socialist Core Values and very few of the popular Internet celebrities are paragons of those values,” he said. “Individual media creators are much harder to control, and one of the core pillars of the CCP is propaganda and ideological control,” he said.

Celebrities are an important tool for marketing and advertising, and thousands of companies depend on them to disseminate product messages. The size of Internet marketing by Chinese celebrities was estimated at $58 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $100 billion in 2018, according to Beijing-based research agency Analysus.

Many of the social media celebrities come from the world of cinema, television, and sports. But there have been a large number of upstarts who have emerged from nowhere.

Their claim to fame is their ability to raise sensitive social issues, such as the neglect suffered by some so-called “leftover women” who have not found husbands. One such celebrity is Teacher Xu, a popular internet celebrity, who runs a hugely popular account on the WeChat platform.

Almost all celebrities make sure they do not cross the government’s policy line in their posts in texts and videos, said Mark Tanner, Managing Director of China Skinny, an internet based marketing company.

“Everyone in China knows that if you want to be a successful and effective voice in China, you need to toe the party line. So right to Pappi Chang to the little guys on the road, they know what to say and what not to say,” he said.

Analysts say the immense popularity of these high profile individuals is itself seen as a challenge to the authorities even if they do not take up political issues. A lot of what they talk about is indirectly connected to governance issues like the environment, and this is what bothers top officials.

Censor troubles

“Celebrities happen to hold a powerful microphone to speak to society, and in CCP leaders’ eyes, that alone is threatening no matter how non-political most of them may be,” said Christopher Cairns, a Cornell scholar.

The government also has things to worry at the technological level, where the popularity and content production of celebrities seem to be running far ahead of the government’s technical ability to control them.

“A lot of it has to do with lack of control. It is really hard for them to censure real time video. the software hardware for voice and video is just not there yet,” said Jacob Cooke, CEO of Web Presence in China. “And still, a lot of the system depends upon real-time monitoring. So, there are a lot of vague rules in terms of censorship including harming feelings of the Chinese people.”

The censors are using other reasons to crack down on celebrities they don’t like.The BCA reportedly told executives of Internet companies the new cybersecurity law required websites “to not harm the reputation or privacy of individuals.”

The government has said the new law is necessary for security reasons, but many analysts fear it can be used to surpress freedom of speech on the Internet.

 
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From: MeNeedIt

A new exhibition in southern Poland shows the brutality of the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz through the artistic work of its inmates. Some of the artworks are being shown publicly for the first time.

The “Face to Face: Art in Auschwitz” exhibition opened last week at the Kamienica Szolayskich (Szolayski Tenement House) of the National Museum in Krakow to mark 70 years of the Auschwitz Museum. The museum’s task is to preserve the site in the southern town of Oswiecim and to educate visitors about it. More than 2 million people visited the museum last year.

The curator of the Krakow exhibit, Agnieszka Sieradzka, said Wednesday it includes clandestine as well as commissioned drawings and paintings by Jews, Poles and other citizens held at Auschwitz during World War II.

“These works help us see Auschwitz as the inmates saw it and experienced it,” Sieradzka told The Associated Press. “We stand face to face with the inmates.”       

The Nazis sometimes ordered talented inmates to make paintings for various purposes. One such painting is a portrait of a Roma woman that pseudo-scientist Josef Mengele experimented on. Mengele ordered portraits like this from inmate painter Dina Gottliebova, a Jewish woman from Czechoslovakia.

The task helped Gottliebova survive. After the war, she traveled to the U.S. and started a family. She died in 2009 in California under the name Dina Babbitt.

Among the clandestine art is the so-called Auschwitz Sketchbook by an unknown author. It has 22 drawings of scenes of beatings, starvation and death. It was found in 1947, hidden in a bottle in the foundation of a barrack at Birkenau, a part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. It is the first time it is being shown to the general public. It is housed at the museum and only shown on request. 

Also being displayed is the original “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free) gate top that was stolen and retrieved in 2009 and is now kept under guard at the museum. 

From 1940 to 1945, some 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews but also Poles, Roma and Russians, were killed in the gas chambers or died from starvation, excessive forced labor and disease at Auschwitz, which Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland.
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From: MeNeedIt

Introducing a brand-new, multimillion-dollar intergalactic adventure film based on a French comic book strip during a summer box office dominated by superheroes and sequels may be considered a big risk to take by an independent filmmaker.

But French director Luc Besson was so confident in his vision for adapting the Valerian and Laureline sci-fi comics into a film, he took his script and sketches to buyers at the Cannes Film Festival three years ago with the hopes of securing funding for the $150 million project.

“They all raised their hands because they loved the script, so we had almost 90 percent of the funding in one day,” Besson told Reuters.

Set in the 28th century where humans and aliens have found a home on the space station Alpha, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets follows two space agents, the cocky Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and the spirited Laureline (Cara Delevingne), trying to uncover the origins of a mysterious force.

They journey through the different environments and diverse population of Alpha, known as the city of a thousand planets where species include sea monsters, organic robots, winged reptilians and thuggish, bug-eyed ogres.

The film comes out in theaters on July 21 and is the fruition of Besson’s nearly 50-year obsession with the comic strip he discovered at age 10, setting him on a path to make films such as The Fifth Element and Lucy.

Lots of competition

The stakes are high for Besson’s EuropaCorp film studio as Valerian enters a box office saturated with superhero films such as Wonder Woman and Spider-Man: Homecoming and sequels such as War for the Planet of the Apes and Despicable Me 3.

Still, the director didn’t consider it a gamble.

“You take risks when you do a first-time director movie at $8 million and no cast. That’s a gamble,” Besson said, adding that Valerian’s theatrical rights had already been bought across nearly 120 countries.

Early reviews for the film have been mixed, with critics praising the vibrant visuals but criticizing the plot and performances.

Variety’s Peter Debruge said the film’s “creativity outweighs its more uneven elements.” Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy dubbed it a front-runner for the Razzies, Hollywood’s annual tongue-in-cheek “worst film” awards.

But Besson believes the audience will determine the success of the film and future installments.

“I wish they love the film because I’m dying to make another one because I love Cara and Dane,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Working 50 meters (164 feet) under ground with minimal air supply, Uuganbaatar is one of thousands of Mongolians trying to make a living digging for coal.

Although the mining season does not begin until autumn, when the ground freezes and work is safer, the 31-year-old and his colleagues are seeking to gain a head start by digging a shaft in Nalaikh, one of the nine districts of Mongolia’s capital Ulaanbaatar, in late June.

But their mine could soon be shut by the government, which has launched an unprecedented crackdown on sites that don’t meet safety standards.

That would mean even fewer opportunities for Mongolia’s individual prospectors, who have already been hit hard by the privatization of mines previously open to all.

Miners such as Uuganbaatar dig for coal under loose arrangements with local unions and private companies.

“Things seem really tough for private miners now,” said Uuganbaatar, who, like many Mongolians, goes by one name. “All the licenses have been bought up by influential big shots. Whenever you start to dig somewhere, someone shows up and chases us away. It’s impossible to find a place or mine to dig in.”

A weak economy and particularly harsh winters drove herdsman from across Mongolia to Nalaikh’s private mines in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The district, with a population of nearly 30,000, was home to Mongolia’s first state mining company, which collapsed in the 1990s in the midst of a post-communist economic crisis. The firm’s dilapidated buildings dot the landscape.

With the economy slowing again after a commodities boom earlier in the decade, authorities fear more people could be tempted down the mines.

“More mines will probably be shut down,” said Byambadorj, a woman who ran two private mine shafts with her husband for 13 years until the government closed them in June.

“In Nalaikh, life revolves around mining, and mining is the main means to support our lives,” she says, insisting that her mines were operating according to the safety standards.

The government had tried to get companies to improve safety by issuing licenses. An official said nine companies had been granted licenses, but not all had met the standards.

“People were working in shafts with no air supply,” said S. Battulga, an official whose department is responsible for reviewing mining licenses across the country.

“Therefore, it was requested that the private mining licenses in Nalaikh be cancelled” on health and safety grounds, he added.

Nalaikh authorities would like people to switch from mining to work in brick factories, but no one seems keen to switch despite the danger.

In the past 25 years, the government has recorded 234 fatalities in Nalaikh’s coal mines, although residents say the real number is hundreds higher.
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From: MeNeedIt

Not all the action now underway at Wimbledon is on the tennis court. In back rooms on the tournament site, technology is taking the matches to a whole new level. It offers the most immersive view to tennis fans, whether they are in the stands, or following the play on screens around the world. VOA’s Faiza Elmasry has this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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From: MeNeedIt

Environmentalists promote solar energy as an option to reduce pollution, but in places without a central electricity supply solar panels can be a practical solution. They are frequently used by nomads moving through the desert, and people living in remote villages. In recent years solar panels have come to serve as a source of energy in places affected by war and conflict. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports solar panels are now a common sight in villages across Syria.
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From: MeNeedIt

Japanese car parts company Takata on Tuesday recalled another 2.7 million air bags that it previously thought were safe.

The recall affects certain Ford, Mazda and Nissan cars from the 2005 through 2012 model years.

Takata’s air bags are inflated by a chemical — ammonium nitrate — in emergency situations, but it can deteriorate in conditions of high humidity and heat. The company added a desiccant to stop the chemical inflators from degrading and thought they had then been made safe.

However, tests by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board showed that Takata air bags were still subject to inflating without warning, expanding with great force and sending metal parts flying. Previous problems with Takata air bags have killed at least 17 people and injured more than 180.

Takata, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, has already recalled 42 million cars to replace the defective inflators, the largest automobile-related recall in U.S. history. But the latest recall raised doubts about the safety of other Takata inflators. The company has agreed to recall all original equipment inflators without a drying agent in phases by the end of 2018. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration gave Takata until the end of 2019 to prove that inflators with the drying agents are safe, or they must be recalled as well.

U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, said federal regulators have to act faster to determine whether all Takata air bag inflators are safe.

“We certainly can’t afford to wait until the December 2019 deadline. … If even more are found to be defective, it will take us from being the biggest recall ever to something that could become mind-boggling,” Nelson said.
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From: MeNeedIt

On the day they were freed from slavery, the fishermen hugged, high-fived and sprinted through a stinging rain to line up so they wouldn’t be left behind. But even as they learned they were going home, some wept at the thought of returning empty-handed and becoming one more mouth to feed.

Two years have passed since an Associated Press investigation spurred that dramatic rescue, leading to the release of more than 2,000 men trapped on remote Indonesian islands. The euphoria they first felt during reunions with relatives has long faded. Occasional stories of happiness and opportunity have surfaced, but the men’s fight to start over has largely been narrated by shame and struggle.

Some of them are lucky to find odd jobs paying pennies an hour in cramped slums and rural villages in Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos. Others must travel far from home for back-breaking labor.

Some suffer night terrors and trauma from the years or even decades of physical and mental abuse they endured on boats run by Thai captains. Others have fought their demons with drugs and alcohol.

At least one Cambodian tried to hang himself. Another Thai fisherman went back to work on a different boat at home, only to have his arm ripped off by a net. He says he was offered about $3 and a few packets of instant noodles as compensation.

The men left their impoverished homes years ago full of hope and headed to neighboring Thailand, promising to send money back from good-paying jobs. Instead, they were tricked, sold or even kidnapped and put onto boats that became floating prisons.

They then were trafficked thousands of miles away to the isolated Indonesian island village of Benjina, where the AP first found hundreds of captive fishermen, including some locked in a cage simply because they asked to go home. They were beaten and routinely forced to work up to 22 hours a day. The unluckiest ones ended up in the sea or buried in a company graveyard under fake names – their bodies will likely never be recovered.

The AP story prompted the Indonesian government to initiate a rescue. It also traced fish tainted by forced labor back to the supply chains of many major U.S. companies and pet food brands, including Wal-Mart, Sysco, Kroger, Fancy Feast and Iams.

“What happened in Benjina has opened everybody’s eyes,” says Indonesian fishing minister Susi Pudjiastuti, who oversaw the rescue and is pushing for improved human rights at sea globally.

Despite all the suffering following their homecomings, there are stories of inspiration.

Some of the men borrowed money, enrolled in trade school or found decent work, saving what little they could. Others are opening small businesses, or have married and started families.

A few have gone to court to challenge their former captains, receiving a small portion of the pay they were owed. In rare instances, some even helped send their traffickers to jail.

Many say time has helped soften the pain, but most remain angry about the money and years lost to Benjina. Still, they are thankful to be home, living as free men.

They are slaves no more.

Sick and unemployed

MON STATE, Myanmar – Myint Naing sits outside the flimsy thatch shack he shares with five other family members. He stares silently at a computer alongside his mother and sister, watching flickering images of their extraordinary reunion two years ago.

The memories are still raw of Myint collapsing into his wailing mother’s arms on the same dusty road just feet away from where they sit now in southern Myanmar. That day was tinged with both joy and sorrow for all the time lost – ending 22 years of separation after Myint was taken to Indonesia and nearly beaten to death by a captain who refused to let him go home.

His mother blots her eyes and briefly looks away from the screen. Myint’s younger sister sees herself embracing her brother and screaming, “We don’t need money! We just need family!”

She never realized just how much those words would be tested every day in the harsh reality of poverty.

Myint, now 42, desperately wants to work, but he’s simply not able. He tried doing construction and other manual labor, but the muscles on the right side of his body were weakened by a stroke-like attack in Indonesia. He can’t even steady a smartphone with one hand long enough to take a selfie.

He dreams of opening a little snack shop to contribute to the family’s income, but there is no money to start it.

“Half of my body is suffering, and it’s very challenging for me to get a job anywhere,” he says, as his nieces dance around him on a rickety porch. “I don’t really know how to keep going like this.”

He’s also stressed. He and his sister moved out of their mother’s house soon after he returned, partially because Myint didn’t get along with his new stepfather, who is about his age.

His sister, Mawli Than, and her husband together earn less than $5.50 a day to feed three children and three adults. But she has kept her promise to love and care for him no matter what.

She wishes she could afford to get Myint the long-term medical care he needs. Her voice cracks when she talks about not being able to give him a proper ceremony before he left to study as a Buddhist novice, a custom that every devout Burmese male tries to fulfill.

“I feel really sad and guilty that I wasn’t able to do that,” she says, sobbing, as he listens quietly in the doorway. “My brother is like a father to me.”

Myint’s freshly shaved head reveals two large scars he received during his years in Indonesia. One is from a motorbike helmet, the other from an iron rod – both blows from angry fishing captains.

He eventually escaped his captors and lived in the jungle for years, farming vegetables with help from sympathetic local families.

He insists life is better now that he is home. But his mind often drifts to the past. If his former Thai captains would just pay him what he’s owed for all the time he worked on the boats, he could buy his own house and help his sister instead of making her life harder.

“I’m very angry at them. I can’t even find words,” he says. “If I ever saw them again, I might kill them.”

Happy on land

PREK TATIENG, Cambodia – A gas-powered pump growls on Sriev Kry’s back as he walks barefoot, spraying a stream of pesticide on pink lotus blossoms that will soon be ready for harvest.

The work is hard and unforgiving. He doesn’t wear a mask or other protective gear, and there aren’t any trees in the surrounding rice paddy to shield him from the blistering sun. But this is Cambodian soil, and it belongs to him. It’s a freedom he says he never really understood until being trafficked and enslaved in Benjina.

The wiry rice farmer never wanted to be a fisherman because the ocean’s roiling waves had always sent him running to the side of the boat to vomit. So when a cousin asked if he was interested in leaving his rural Cambodian village to find higher-paying work in Thailand, he refused until he was promised a factory job or something else on land.

Unlike most migrant workers who cross the border illegally, Sriev Kry and two of his cousins waited to receive passports before leaving in 2014.

They were immediately taken to a boat and ordered to get on board after receiving $880 advances. They were told they wouldn’t be at sea long. But it was all a lie.

Just as their trawler reached the Malaysian border, Sriev Kry says he woke up to learn a Burmese fisherman was missing. They didn’t stop to search for him, and no calls were made for help. Instead, Sriev Kry says the Thai owner told the workers that “life on the boat doesn’t matter. No one cares about missing people.”

He says the men then watched as the crew member’s passport was tossed into the sea, destroying the only record of his existence.

“The other workers just saw that life is very cheap,” Sriev Kry recalls. “It is cheaper than the bodies of dogs.”

He tried not to cause problems and worked nonstop on the boat, sorting mountains of fish. He saw other crew beaten or scalded by water tossed on them when they were too sick to work.

“It’s like a slave’s life. It’s even worse than a slave. Slaves can sometimes complain or challenge the owner,” he says. “If we refused, if we complained, the Thai owner always asked: ‘You want to live? You want to have a life? Or do you want to die?’”

Sriev Kry was only able to contact his wife a few times from Benjina. He told her he wasn’t sure he’d ever make it back home to the emerald green rice paddies and lotus fields they tended together.

Two of their four children were studying in the capital, Phnom Penh, with one already in university. The baby was just a year old, and the family was struggling to survive because Sriev Kry never sent the money he was promised. But his wife, Khan Srin, encouraged him to hold on. To focus on staying alive.

When he was finally rescued, Sriev Kry was done being silent: He volunteered to testify against his captain. He saw it as his duty to speak out to prevent others from facing the same fate. He is still waiting for his day in court.

Today, at 44, he earns about $10 a day farming the field that rings a one-room shack perched on stilts overlooking the few acres of land he owns. He sleeps here sometimes, away from his nearby village, to stand watch over his crops. He also sells mangoes from his beat-up motorbike just across the border in Vietnam and harvests catfish from a lake – the only fishing he says he will ever do again.

It’s not much, but it’s enough to pay his debts and feed his family. His captain in Benjina swore more earnings would be sent, but Sriev Kry says nothing ever came.

He remains angry and is still haunted by the image of the dead crewman’s passport being thrown into the sea. But he’s happy to be home and vows he’ll never leave his family again.

“I was just rescued from hell,” he says, shaking his head. “Why would I go back to hell again?”

Still a fisherman

YANGON, Myanmar – Phyo Kyaw’s father wept when he heard his son was returning to Thailand to board another fishing boat. But there was nothing he could do.

After the 31-year-old was rescued from Benjina, he worked a few months on the gritty outskirts of Yangon driving a bus and a motorbike taxi, but the money wasn’t good and his bike soon was stolen.

Several of Phyo’s friends from Benjina already had gone back to Thailand to find better-paying work, and they encouraged him to get a passport and join them on another fishing boat. They had heard good stories about the company, and they all had legal working documents this time. They were convinced their papers would protect them from exploitation.

Phyo left Myanmar without telling his father. He went to the same port town where he was initially trafficked and got on a trawler with 13 other Burmese men.

After being beaten and spending more than two years on Benjina with no pay, he was scared of being trafficked again but decided to take a chance. As he prepared to leave, he met other fishermen who had just docked – they had been at sea for three years without touching land.

“I don’t think it’s fair, but it’s my choice to go,” Phyo says. “My father is the only financial provider here for the moment so at least if I go to Thailand, I can bring some money back.”

Phyo didn’t know where his boat was going or how long he would be gone. He also had no idea if he was fishing legally or poaching, a common but dangerous practice that can land an entire crew in a foreign jail.

The days were still long but, this time, he got a few more hours of sleep – four or five a night – and he wasn’t beaten.

After six months at sea, the trawler returned to Thailand. Phyo should have made nearly $1,600 for the trip, but was left with just $350 after deductions for fees, food and supplies.

He could have earned nearly double that amount driving the motorbike taxi back home. Still, he’s thinking about going out to sea again with another group of Benjina guys.

His father, an electrical engineer, can only shake his head with disappointment.

“As parents, you are always worried about your children,” Aye Kyaw, 67, says inside the family’s small, sweltering apartment.

But Phyo just shrugs. Fishing is what he knows.

“If I can get a better job here, I won’t go,” he says. “But if I don’t have anything, I will go on a fishing boat.”

Forgiveness as a monk

SAMUT SAKHON, Thailand – Wrapped in flowing saffron robes with a shaved head, Prasert Jakkawaro speaks calmly and softly as he looks back on his lost life.

He spent eight years fishing the Arafura Sea’s rich waters off Benjina. If he was lucky, his boat docked twice a year. He worked around the clock, but says he was never paid what was promised.

The memories still cut like razor blades, but he does not show it. His voice remains steady, his fingers laced loosely across his lap. The rage that once sent him searching for solace at the bottom of a bottle has died. He now finds comfort praying in a monastery as a Buddhist monk and helping others who have lost their way.

“I feel that I have to give forgiveness and kindness back,” he says, his robe concealing tattoos from his former life. “I have another chance. There’s no point in dwelling on the past. The anger will only follow me in this life and into the next.”

Finding peace wasn’t easy: He was first forced to confront all of the evil he saw.

Even though the captains were Thai like him, he says he was treated just as badly as his fellow fishermen from Myanmar and Cambodia. They rarely had vegetables or meat to eat – just fish and rice for every meal, and even that wasn’t guaranteed. Those who got sick were forced to work anyway, and he saw one crew member die due to a lack of medical attention. Sleep was a luxury.

“If you don’t get up, the metal rod will be used to bang on your door and beat on your legs,” says Prasert, 53. “The rule is that if you can eat, then you have to work.”

When he asked to go home after just one year on his trawler, he was told he first had to find a replacement, an impossible request on a remote island with hundreds of other enslaved men just as desperate to leave.

Once, after coming ashore, Prasert asked his captain for more money. As punishment, he says he was tossed into a tiny, muggy cell with about 20 other men.

The security guards then used the imprisoned fishermen for a twisted form of entertainment – forcing them to beat each other up.

“You would get hit so hard that you could see the handprints on your face,” Prasert says.

Over the years, he lost hope and rage festered inside him. He talked about attacking the captain, but the other fishermen always managed to calm him down.

After he was finally rescued and returned home to Thailand, he received a settlement of about $2,250 from the boat owner. It was far short of the nearly $9,000 he says he was owed, but he knows most of the other men received nothing.

The anger continued to swell, and he wallowed in alcohol and slept anywhere he could find, including on a bathroom floor. Staff at the local nonprofit Labor Rights Protection Network, which has long assisted trafficked fishermen, pushed him to seek help.

With encouragement from his sister, Prasert spent three months studying at a Buddhist temple.

Slowly, the hatred began to melt.

“When I attend ceremonies, people really look at me as if I can shine a light on their life, and it makes me feel that I am useful again,” he says. “I feel like I can have real happiness at last.”

* Information for this story came from interviews with nearly 15 former fishermen in Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand along with nonprofits in Cambodia and Thailand.

 
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From: MeNeedIt