Nineteen mainland sailors who were accused of abducting a Taiwan fishing boat will be back in Beijing on Wednesday, after spending almost 48 hours in Malaysian custody.

Sources from the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia said authorities there had detained the sailors after a report from Taiwan officials on Sunday.

According to an embassy staffer surnamed Ning, one of the sailors, Chen Yong, said that violence had led to them holding four Taiwan crewmembers, including the captain and chief mate, in a room for four days.

Fourteen sailors from southwest China's Sichuan Province and five from the central province of Henan were engaged by three labor firms to work on the Taiwanese vessel.

They said they started fishing in the Indian Ocean in April 2003 with an agreed monthly wage of US$150, one-third of which was to be paid by the captain and the rest by the work agencies.

The sailors said they decided to mutiny after the chief mate beat one of them up on January 11.

"It was only four days and we had been negotiating with them during that time," Chen told the embassy by telephone, while still in the custody of Malaysian police.

The sailors finally agreed to sail the ship to Singapore to settle the dispute.

"The captain was lying to us," Chen said. "He secretly contacted people back in Taiwan who called the Malaysian police."

They reportedly said that when Malaysian marine police boarded the boat the Taiwan captain was still "in charge."

A representative of the Taiwan company and the Chinese Embassy in Kuala Lumpur both investigated the case.

At first the sailors refused to go home as arranged because their employers refused to pay them on the grounds that they had mutinied, but after negotiations they accepted an offer of US$500 each for 16 months' work.

(China Daily January 26, 2005)