‘China calls it fishing, Indonesia calls it crime’: Pudjiastuti finds her target for Oceans summit
The Indonesian fisheries minister – known for her penchant for blowing up wayward vessels – sets her sights on Chinese habits ahead of an international conference that will tackle overfishing
“What they are doing is not fishing, it is transnational organised crime,” she tells This Week in Asia after a press conference in Jakarta. “You should write that. They need to understand.”
The straight-talking, self-made businesswoman, who is known as much for her chain-smoking and tattoos as her no-nonsense approach to policy, has been holding forth on her favourite topic: the pillaging of her country’s waters by foreign fishermen.
“We have had several disagreements [with China] on issues of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, they still disagree that it classifies as transnational crime,” she says, ahead of this month’s Our Oceans Conference in Bali. “But mostly these are China-origin vessels [with] multinational crews.
“Without international cooperation, we will not be able to fight this.”
In four years, Indonesia has banned 10,000 foreign-registered vessels from fishing in its waters, half of which have been more than 500 gross tonnes (GT). Hundreds of vessels have since been seized and sunk – in some cases blown up on Pudjiastuti’s orders, as a deterrent to others.
