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lmost a year after placing a ban on renewals of licenses for large, foreign-built fishing vessels, the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry is devising a post-moratorium national plan of action (NPOA) that will focus on strengthening Indonesia'€™s maritime policies in the context of regional integration.

The NPOA will focus on policies promoting sovereignty, sustainability and prosperity, as well as optimizing the ability to detect, respond and punish perpetrators of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

In order to ensure the success of its policies, the government is pushing for the recognition of IUU fishing as a transnational crime.

According to Mas Achmad Santosa, the head of the ministry'€™s illegal fishing prevention task force, the government is looking to enable the handling of IUU fishing and fisheries-related practices across national borders.

Illegal poaching, Ahmad said, was almost always accompanied by related crimes such as human trafficking, modern slavery or the falsification of documents.

'€œA network of illegal poachers at sea is usually controlled by identifiable entities or individuals. In Indonesia'€™s case, the strings are being pulled [by parties] in Thailand and China '€” and it starts out as a ploy with other countries to blur the legality of transfer ownership,'€ Achmad told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Since November last year, the government has enforced a ban on all foreign-built fishing vessels over 30 gross tons (GT) under the suspicion that the operation of these ships might be a ruse for poaching.

A total 1,132 ships owned by 187 fisheries firms underwent an analysis and evaluation (Anev) audit by the illegal fishing prevention task force, in which it was revealed that 907 ships '€” roughly 80 percent '€” had committed operational and administrative infractions.

As a result, the ministry revoked 15 business licenses (SIUP) and 279 operational licenses (SIPI/SIKPI), in addition to pressing criminal charges against 18 large fisheries firms.

Achmad claimed that IUU fishing practices in Indonesia took advantage of lax border control and discrepancy in maritime policies among neighboring countries, raising a pressing need for governments to synchronize their maritime law enforcement policies.

As a result of previous discussions, he continued, the government had started working on a multilateral framework involving Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea and Australia to combat poaching in the Arafura Sea.

'€œWe have to strengthen cooperation among these countries so that we have a common standard for legal enforcement,'€ said the former antigraft activist.

Separately, Ono Surono, a member of the House of Representatives'€™ Commission IV overseeing agriculture and fisheries and the environment, supported the initiative to have IUU fishing recognized as a transnational crime.

Ono urged countries sharing maritime borders '€” especially members of ASEAN, Timor Leste, PNG, China and Australia '€” to establish an institution for collectively handling IUU fishing practices, thus overcoming nations'€™ limited capability to monitor their territorial waters.

Last Friday, National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said that the police force had joined efforts to establish illegal fishing as a transnational crime.

During the 10th ASEAN Minister Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC) held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia two weeks ago, Badrodin explained, Indonesia had highlighted the issue.

'€œWe stressed that illegal fishing was a transnational crime, as it is a violation related to national borders and [occurs] across countries,'€ he said at the National Police headquarters in South Jakarta.

ASEAN'€™s eight priority areas of transnational crime comprise counterterrorism, illicit drug-trafficking, trafficking in persons, money laundering, sea piracy, arms smuggling, international economic crime and cybercrime.

'€œOur focus is not on decreasing [illegal fishing] but on law enforcement. In law enforcement, for example, if a group of people suspected of a crime was caught here but several of them ran away to another country, or if someone was convicted of a crime here but fled the country, then how would we catch them?'€ the police chief asked.