Thanks for listening to our presentation from our delegation. We’d love to hear from you. [laughs]

Also, yes, to help us share the campaign with other policy makers that you think would be allies. If we can even go as far as cosponsoring the bill [laughs] in this area, then that’s something as well that we would love your support on.

Also, about the costs of WiFi and pinning that down so that when we have that pushback from the industry that it’s too expensive, we can have a very clear response that it is now becoming affordable. There is more competition.

In particular, to collaborate with us to explore digital rights for migrant fishers, and what does secure and encrypted WiFi access look like on fishing vessels? Is this even possible? How do we think this through?

That’s good to know. For your ministry, mainly, we’re asking, can you consider to publicly support this campaign? We have an allies pledge that’s available in all of our languages, and if you would be willing to sign that.

NHRC, the National Human Rights Commission, has not yet endorsed the campaign as a whole, but some of the individual commissioners. We’re definitely seeing more supporters. For you…

Because there’s competition now. Exactly. We’re also looking to explore that more. What are the real costs? Our campaign so far, we have a lot of good supporters, including in Taiwan, the Kaohsiung City Industry Federation of Trade Unions, Taiwan Labor Front, and some of the commissioners within NHRC.

We also know that some vessels are already providing WiFi, even some of the smaller vessels are already providing WiFi. We talked so far to one satellite WiFi company called Samsung here, and they told us about the costs. They’re not as high as we as we thought.

There’s not enough money to support it. The Fisheries Agency is providing 10 percent subsidies for the whole fleet, so that’s 110 of the 1,100 fishing vessels. We’re saying that’s not enough, and it definitely needs to go further than that.

The main response so far is that, in principle, they agree that migrant workers should have WiFi in their vessels.

We’ve been meeting with many stakeholders from the government and the industry, the employers as well, to discuss our main ask for the campaign, which is that the Taiwanese government require that all distant water fishing vessels, the ones that are at sea for up to 10 months or longer, ...

We’re also thinking through how to provide training for migrant fishers so that when they do have access to WiFi, they use it in a safe and secure way, and they don’t put themselves at risk by using it in dangerous ways.

I’m sure you know them. We’d really like to take guidance from you about how to strengthen digital rights for migrant workers in Taiwan and explore how they can have safe or encrypted WiFi access at sea. We are not the experts on this tech.

We’re seeking the support of more digital rights organizations for our campaign. We’re already working with one group called Access Now.

A safe and encrypted space for workers to be able to communicate, one that is free from surveillance, in order to protect their rights to freedom of association. That is why we believe your ministry is so important because what we hope is that our campaign drives are inclusive, including ...

Without communication, it completely hinders that right. In our experience, when workers organize, there will be pushback by the industry, and there will be pushback by employers who don’t want to see that power-building of workers. We need to have a safe space for communication.

As Val mentioned, the fact that Taiwan has already given migrant workers the right to form unions. South Korea is the only other country in the region that has afforded migrant workers that right, so it’s a really good starting point, but without WiFi…

There’s a huge power imbalance between the industry and the Indonesian migrant crew. We’re hoping to, through WiFi and through expansion of freedom of association rights and strengthening of FOSPI in other groups, that it will decrease this power imbalance and help address these abuses.

That is why we came here and wanted to start collaborating with unions and offer our support. That is why we are advocating for WiFi because we believe that it will help to address these labor and human rights abuses and really help build the power of workers, which is ...

That ranges from some of the labor rights violations that they’ve already talked about, unpaid wages and contract issues to termination of contract and deportation back to their home countries. Also, in the media, you’ve probably seen cases of forced labor, of human trafficking, of disappearances of workers, and very ...

I guess to wrap up, one of the reasons why our organization started to focus on Taiwan in the first place is because of the seriousness of the abuses that were being reported in the media and by other NGOs.

Should we go around and do quick introductions first?