In this May 16, 2015, photo, former slave fisherman Myint Naing, left, is embraced by his mother Khin Than, second left, as his sister Mawli Than, right, is overcome with emotion after they were reunited after 22 years in their village in Mon State, Myanmar. Myint, 40, is among hundreds of former slave fishermen who returned to Myanmar following an Associated Press investigation into the use of forced labor in Southeast Asia’s seafood industry. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)
Last week, Associated Press reporter Margie Mason told the next chapter in a dramatic story the AP started telling in March. Mason wrote about a Burmese man who had once been enslaved on a fishing ship in Indonesia.
One day in April, a friend came to him with news: An AP report linking slavery in the seafood industry to some of the biggest American grocery stores and pet food companies had spurred the Indonesian government to start rescuing current and former slaves on the islands. To date, more than 800 have been found and repatriated.
This was his chance. When the officials came to Dobo, he went back with them to Tual, where he was once a slave — this time to join hundreds of other free men.
After 22 years in Indonesia, Myint was finally going home. But what, he wondered, would he find?
The AP’s International Enterprise Editor, Mary Rajkumar, spoke with me via email about this latest chapter, how her team has worked to tell the stories of modern-day slavery and why they’re not quite finished yet.
This investigation made a lot of news when it was first published and again when the enslaved men were freed. Tell us about what was going on behind the scenes for your team while following this story through to the latest chapter.
One big concern behind the scenes has been for safety – for the men, and for our reporters. We did not run our first piece until the International Organization for Migration had safely removed the men we quoted and showed on video from the island of Benjina, because we feared they could be punished or worse for telling their stories. Our reporters have been followed around, and we are very careful about where they can and cannot go. On a different note, the reaction behind the scenes has been tremendous. Among other things, three major business umbrella groups wrote to the Thai and Indonesian embassies demanding answers to the questions we raised. The photos we took ended up as part of the record in Congressional testimony. And a big Thai company fired one of its suppliers. We hope there will be more.
From discovering people in cages to seeing many of them freed and eventually returned home, this story has had a lot of moving parts. How have you and your team managed that so that you don’t get overwhelmed (or do you get overwhelmed?)
Oh, we definitely get overwhelmed! But the best solution we’ve found is to talk – a lot. Since we’re all in different time zones – in Southeast Asia, in California and on the East Coast – we do regular calls at 10 p.m. EDT. These calls are absolutely essential for planning our reporting strategy and figuring out how to respond to the many, many twists this story has taken. They also allow us to take the long view wherever possible of what we want to accomplish and how. It helps immensely that the journalists on this team are really top-notch veterans with a lot of experience and skill, and we’ve all worked together closely before.
In a Margie Mason had hundreds of people to choose from when telling this very personal story of finally getting home. How did she choose Myint Naing?
We deliberately talked to a lot of people, for two reasons: We wanted to pick the perfect candidate, and we wanted to make sure his story was at least somewhat representative of all their stories. Over the course of the year-long investigation, the reporters interviewed more than 70 men face-to-face. We also sent written questionnaires in three languages to hundreds of former slaves in a temporary camp before they went home. We loved Myint’s story because it was so dramatic, and because it gave us the chance to write the narrative around a relationship – his tie to his mother. Also, he – unlike some of the men – was able to find his family, which made for an incredibly moving ending.
Tell me about the different ways the AP told this story, from text to multimedia.
We have many different audiences, so it’s particularly important for the AP to tell stories across formats. The various pieces in this package included the text stories, photos, online and APTN video, an interactive and a map. We think a lot about how to coordinate early in the process, and how to adapt our material to the needs of each format. For example, the story arcs were different with the text, the interactive and the video.
Have you ever been part of a story like this in your career? Can you talk about what it has been like for you and your team?
As AP’s international enterprise editor, I have the privilege of taking part in a lot of excellent work. But this story has stood out for its extensive and almost immediate impact – it’s not every day that we help get hundreds of slaves freed. It’s been very gratifying for all of us to see that journalism really can make a difference. At the same time, it’s very humbling to be reminded that slavery persists in this day and age, and we all feel we have a lot more to get done.
I’m guessing these stories will continue. Can you tell us about what’s next?
The stories will certainly continue. The pattern for such stories in the past has been that companies, and even countries, lie low for a while, and then everything goes back to normal and the slave trade resumes. AP is committed to keep pushing. And we need to explain the broader picture of why modern-day slavery is so resilient, and what the underlying factors are that not just allow but support it. We also want to keep following the companies and governments involved to make sure they follow through with their promises.
