HORROR ON THE HIGH SEAS
The Aftermath of the Maersk Dubai
by Linda Pannozzo
HighGrader Magazine March /April 2000

Cape Trafalgar may have been the last stretch of land they saw. We'll never know. Their bodies were never found. In early March 1996, two Rumanian stowaways, Radu Danciu and Petre Sangeorzan were apparently forced overboard from a rusty cargo ship, the Maersk Dubai, as it was crossing the Atlantic.
Two months later, on a second cross-ocean voyage, another Rumanian stowaway, Gheorghe Mihoc, was discovered and was forced overboard. A fourth Rumanian, Nicolae Pasca was hidden by Filipino sailors until the ship reached Halifax.
When the Maersk Dubai reached the Canadian port, four Filipino sailors came forward and said they had witnessed the ruthless murder of the stowaways on the high seas. They said the men were forced overboard by the Taiwanese captain, Cheng Shiou and some of his Taiwanese officers.
Three years later, the only ones who seem to have paid a price in this terrible tale are the men who came forward.
HighGrader takes a look at the aftermath of the Maersk Dubai inquiry and the failure of the Canadian officials to bring justice to the high seas.
Ariel Broas
Forty-one year-old Ariel Broas agrees to meet me on the condition I don't ask him about his family. I accept. His surprisingly boyish face, framed by a black Nike cap, is tight, tentative. He's not sure whether he should smile. He's conscious of his accent.
"Torture," is how he describes the sixteen years he spent working on ships. "It's totally boring. There's nothing to see, only the ocean, sky and sun."
It may have been a life of boredom but it paid well. In a month, Broas could pocket $2,000 US - "totally clean," he declares with a quick sweep of his hand across the tabletop. The price of ship life was worth it, that is, until his fateful voyage on the Maersk Dubai.
In February, 1996, Broas joined the Maersk Dubai in Bombay, India, as third engineer. It was his first time working for Yang Ming Lines, the Taiwanese shipping company that owned the aging container ship.
For a month the ship docked in numerous ports, loading and unloading. But on March 12, six hours after leaving port in Algeciras, outside the Strait of Gibraltar, in high seas, the Chief Engineer told Broas two stowaways had been found on board. Broas was ordered to slow the engines. He went on deck and saw two stowaways, the Captain, the second officer, most of the crew and a hand-made raft. It was cold so he returned to the engine room and saw nothing more.
Thirty-six-year old Juanito Ilagan was also present. When he is alone, the events on the Maersk Dubai continually rewind and play in his mind. "I ask myself, did I try my best. I think I could have done a little more, but what else I don't know. I spoke to the second officer, tried to sweet-talk him out of it."
Ilagan says he saw the stowaways -- Radu Danciu and Petre Sangeorzan --being forced overboard into the Atlantic. The Captain was yelling at the men as they went over the side.
"His eyes were devil's eyes, fuming mad," Ilagan recounted in one CBC radio interview. Before being forced onto the raft, one of the stowaways turned to Ilagan begging "please" in Spanish. Helpless, Ilagan began to cry.
Sailor Rudy Miguel remembers the men pleading with the Captain, grabbing for their passports and pointing at pictures of their families.
Miguel says he insisted a raft be built for them. One was hastily constructed out of old oil drums, some wood and rope. When it hit the water it collapsed. A second raft was built. By this time the stowaways were kneeling on the floor and begging for their lives.
At the extradition hearing, the prosecution called an expert witness, Captain John Lewis. Based on his calculations and the ship's log book the nearest point of land when the stowaways were put overboard was likely Cape Trafalgar, the northwest entrance of the Strait of Gibraltar, 40-50 miles away. The ocean was rough with 10-11 foot waves.
Miguel maintains the Taiwanese officers forced the two Rumanians over the side of the ship down a wooden pilot's ladder. In the end their fingers had to be pried away. Miguel recalls seeing one fall into the ocean.

In the days that followed Ilagan couldn't sleep; he and Broas decided to write a letter outlining what they had seen. Broas, blinded for nearly two weeks after an accident with the air compressor, dictated while Ilagan wrote.
"The worst thing they did was the violation of human rights when they discharged two stowaways who came from Algeciras, Spain. They forced the two stowaways to go down from the ship in mid-sea," read part of the letter. When the ship returned to Algeciras they posted it to Father Randy Albano, a port chaplain in Houston, Texas.
The letter made its way to the Halifax "Mission to Seamen" and by May it had reached the RCMP. News of the letter also made its way back to a tiny village high in Rumania's Transylvanian Alps and the families of Danciu and Sangeorzan. The families contacted friends in the Rumanian community in Texas who in turn contacted two Houston lawyers, J.D. Johnson and Frederick Hoelke.
"Word got out somehow, some way, and a few days before the ship docked in Halifax, [the Rumanian families] contacted my office asking for help to arrest the ship," says Hoelke. The Texas lawyers would later play a key role in helping the Rumanian families.

But as these events were beginning to swirl on the land, sailors on the Maersk Dubai were witnessing another horrific nightmare. On a second voyage from Algeciras, Gheorghe Mihoc, another Rumanian stowaway, was discovered hiding among the steel containers on deck. Ilagan says he was woken up by a Filipino cook who told him that a stowaway was found and the Taiwanese officers, this time carrying knives, were going to kill him.
Rudy Miguel says he saw Captain Cheng Shiou and four of his crew holding a knife to Mihoc. From a hatch door Miguel saw a struggle, heard Mihoc screaming and watched him being pushed over the side of the ship.
When the Filipinos discovered a fourth Rumanian stealing passage, 23-year-old Nicolae Pasca, they hid him below deck bringing him water and scraps of food for the nine days it took to reach Canada.
When the ship reached Halifax, Pasca was handed over safely to the authorities. The RCMP, armed with the accusatory letter, arrested the Captain and his main officers.
Four Filipino sailors, including Broas, were asked to testify at the extradition hearing, a 10 month legal tug-of-war to determine whether Canada, Rumania or Taiwan had the jurisdiction to try the case. The Filipinos agreed to testify on the condition their families back home, who they claimed were experiencing threats, were protected.
In the end, the court decided it had no jurisdiction to prosecute. The Taiwanese captain and crew were allowed to return to Taiwan. So far no action has been taken against them in Taiwan and some accounts claim the men are back working for the Yang Ming Lines (albeit in lower paying office jobs).
Things, however, haven't been so easy for the four Filipinos. Claiming fear of retribution, they applied for refugee status. Their claims were rejected twice and finally, more than two years after the Maersk Dubai darkened the waters of Halifax Harbour, the Minister of Immigration let them stay on humanitarian and compassionate grounds.
But life in Canada has been no picnic for the four men and their families.

Part Time Work
Since leaving the Maersk Dubai, working at a local fish plant is the closest Broas has come to working on the sea. A couple of jobs later he now spends his days as a customer service assistant at a local drug store. Two weeks pay covers his $400 a month rent, the rest bills. "I wish I could go back to the Philippines, but I don't want to be hurt."
Juanito Ilagan, who also testified, was separated from his wife Cecille and their two young children, Ruth and Kelvin, for three years. At the time of the extradition hearing, Cecille was a dental assistant studying to be a fully qualified dentist in the Philippines. She stopped attending classes and feared leaving her house in Cavite after receiving numerous phone threats in the period leading up to the hearing.
The family has finally been reunited in Halifax but their standard of living is a far cry from what it once was. Cecille is a cashier at a local drug store and Ilagan, who spent nine years as a professional seaman, does laundry for a hotel.
"I grew up with three maids, a cook and a laundry woman," he chuckles. "In the Philippines there was always family and helping hands around - it was much easier. Here we do it all alone."
Ilagan says life is harder here. "I hope everything cools down so we can go home. All the immigrants wanted to go home, only we can't."

Ordered to Make Raft
"I could still remember those two guys kneeling in front of me. I will remember that as long as I'm alive," recalls Esmeraldo Esteban. For 21 years he made his living on the ships as an "able-bodied seaman." Like the others, he joined the Maersk Dubai in February, 1996. On that morning in March, Esteban was ordered by the Bosun to make a raft.
"We made a raft in silence...we used some ropes, wood, it was not really secure," he says. He remembers one of the stowaways grabbing his boots and pleading in Spanish not to be put over. An officer pushed both of the men onto the ladder, over the side and the Captain ordered the ship to sail away. Esteban hoisted up the pilot ladder. He heard about Mihoc, the third stowaway, from the ship's carpenter but only saw him from a distance.
Esteban's testimony at the extradition hearing turned his family's life in the Philippines upside down. "It was a big trauma," explains Teresita, Esteban's wife. "I don't want to live here in Canada. We had a house of our own, a mango plantation and I had a business there." Teresita ran a small import/export business selling a sweet ingredient for fruit salads made of rice and coconut wine.
But then the threats started. After their dog was run over, they received a call telling them it was an example of what would happen if Esteban testified. Teresita and the three children abandoned everything and fled first to a sister-in-law's and later found "sanctuary" at a United Church compound.
Today the family rents a house in Dartmouth. Teresita works part-time at an upscale gift store and Esteban as a housekeeper at a Halifax hotel. On weekends he works the overnight shift and spends the days trying to catch up on sleep. But that's not all he's trying to catch up on, he says. "I'm busy just trying to catch up with my family's needs."

Gifts of new and used furniture from friends and supporters furnish Rudy Miguel's small basement apartment in Halifax. Two of his daughters, April Rose, 13 and Hosseina, 14 sit whispering at the kitchen table over their homework while five-year-old Joshua flies about the living room with his toy truck.
Miguel's wife, Maripaz, is busy making what they tell me is a traditional Filipino noodle dish. She joins the conversation intermittently and points out that "when that thing happened" our life became "a misery."
Arriving in Canada last October, the Miguels were the last family to be reunited. Miguel is holding down two jobs right now as a stock clerk for two local stores.
A hand-stitched wall hanging above the television bears a Canadian flag, a Filipino flag, the first names of the four Filipino sailors and an unbalanced scale. "It was made by one of my friends in the support group. It's very significant," Miguel beams. "The scale is not balanced because of the first time we were at court."
Miguel says that he and the others are pursuing a civil claim against Yang Ming Line. Their lawyer, Richard Bureau, confirms they are seeking damages and some form of compensation but says, "we'd rather resolve it without publicity."

No Justice
"Lip service." This is what Lee Cohen calls the legal work that's been done in Taiwan to bring the Taiwanese captain and crew to justice. Cohen was the immigration lawyer for the four Filipino men.
When Taiwan's prosecution service subpoenaed Rudy Miguel to appear in a Taiwanese court, the subpoena was delivered in Halifax the same day Miguel was scheduled to appear in Taiwan.
Cohen says it suggests a "lack of seriousness" on their part. He also claims that the Taiwanese authorities took forever to mount a charge.
That's not the only thing that seems to take forever when dealing with Taiwan. Just try getting a straight answer from anyone at Yang Ming Line, the operators of the Maersk Dubai (which now sails under the name Med Taichung).
After numerous efforts I made contact with spokesman Captain Cheng Yi at the Yang Ming Line headquarters in Taipei.
He makes a point of telling me, three times, that Yang Ming Line, 40% owned by the Taiwan government, is totally independent from the country's court system. It's obviously a sore point.
"Newspapers in Taiwan have been silent on this case for almost a year," Yi says. "All the crew were released. Some are now doing business selling clothes, some in other businesses."
Yi dismisses reports that Shou or any of the other men have returned to work for Yang Ming Line as "impossible." Yi says that Captain Shiou was charged with negligence and the case is still pending.

The families of the disappeared men ended up settling out of court with the Yang Ming Line. Texas lawyers J.D Johnson and Frederick Hoelke handled the case, which at one point was claiming $30 million (U.S. ) in damages. Frederick Hoelke says the case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum shortly before it was set to go to trial.
Nicolae Pasca, the fourth stowaway, made a claim for refugee status in Canada in the summer of 1996. Lee Cohen met with him then but says he "became disillusioned and frightened by the extradition process and he left."
Speaking from his office in Halifax, Cohen sums up the story of the Maersk Dubai.
"The legacy of the Maersk Dubai case in Canada is as shameful as the origins of the case."
Cohen believes that Canada should have gone to the wall and seized jurisdiction to try the six officers for murder here. Cohen points to the time the Canadian government, through then Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin, decided to go beyond Canadian territorial waters to arrest a Spanish fishing vessel they said was fishing illegally.
"It's a sad commentary," says Cohen, "when a government is prepared to extend it's jurisdiction for fish and not humans."
Cohen speculates the politics might be at the root of the failure of Canadian justice. He recalls that during the immigration hearings he noticed a front page photo of Prime Minister Chretien in Bucharest, Rumania cutting a ribbon on a Candu reactor. "I couldn't help but see the irony - we didn't want to jeopardize successful trade relations with Rumania or Taiwan," he says.
In the end, the only men to have paid any price seems to have been the four Filipino sailors. "Their material status is dramatically diminished for telling the truth," says Cohen. "They've experienced the extraordinary perversion of the Canadian justice system."
And then there are the three stowaways - Danciu, Sangeorzan and Mihoc. Their only crime, Cohen points out, was stealing passage on a boat in search of a better life.
"Hardly worthy of a death sentence."

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