Russian Captain's Daughter Describes Repatriation Delays in China

The bodies of sailors who died aboard vessels in China«s Hebei province while working for the company Ostrovnoy Krab may remain in China for up to a month. To have them removed, the relatives of the deceased had to repeatedly authorize agents and fill out documents that turned out to be unnecessary, Anastasia Karlova, daughter of the 55-year-old Russian captain Evgeny Karlov, told VLADIVOSTOK1.RU.

Irina Ch., the wife of one of the deceased sailors, told the Ren-TV television channel about the deaths. According to her, the man flew from Vladivostok to China on 23 July to ferry a vessel registered in Sakhalin Region, but on 2 August she was informed that he had died.

It later emerged that three sailors had died under unclear circumstances. RIA Novosti reported that they worked on a vessel owned by Ostrovnoy Krab, a company registered in Sakhalin Region. Chinese investigators found no evidence of a crime, and according to the relatives, the company conducted no internal investigation.

The bodies have now been in China for a month, most recently in a Chinese morgue, but no autopsy has been performed, and relatives were offered cremation as a way to return the deceased to Russia more quickly.

VLADIVOSTOK1.RU repeatedly tried to contact the company, including a representative overseeing the repatriation process, but had received no reply by the time of publication.

In Anastasia«s view, the company responded rather coldly to her father»s death — he was an experienced captain with long service at Ostrovnoy Krab. No one called to offer condolences to his grandmother, the mother of the deceased. Immediately after the death, a company employee was in touch, saying what to do and which documents to fill out.

Anastasia said that at the very beginning they were asked to sign a form stating that the relatives «have no objections to the cause of death established by the Chinese public security authorities in the investigation».

«When I asked why we should write that if they had established nothing, he replied that it was just a formality. We filled it all out, and then over the next three days he asked six more times to either remove my father«s patronymic from the form or put it back. First to write my father»s foreign passport details, then to change them to his Russian internal passport details. And every time it was urgent, urgent, needed within an hour. At the same time, he could not fix these small things in the form himself or send all the corrections at once. In the end, this form was not needed at all», Anastasia recalled.

They were then asked to produce a power of attorney for the company«s Chinese agent to represent the relatives in China in matters concerning autopsies and the repatriation of the bodies. But here too, according to Anastasia, things did not go smoothly.

«They said to go to a notary urgently. I went and started filling out the documents, and an hour later they wrote to me that it was no longer needed, that it was off — that agent had pulled out and they were looking for a new one. But I was not in Vladivostok, I was in a small town visiting my grandmother, where the wait for a notary is 10 days. The next day he wrote that the power of attorney was needed for different people, and everyone urgently had to go to a notary. We went and made the power of attorney. In the evening he wrote that corrections were needed. But that is not how it works — we had to make a new one», the young woman said.

Next, a certified statement authorizing an autopsy in China was required, but she could not get to a notary quickly.

«I asked him to book me an appointment with the notary, since I couldn«t get there. He replied: »That«s your responsibility, book it yourself.» I said: I can«t book it here, you deal with it. He suggested I go to Vladivostok, five hours each way, and visit a notary there. I replied that three people had died at their company and they should be helping in some way. His answer was: »So what? I«m not going to listen to your hysterics»», the woman said.

In the end, the company did book Anastasia an appointment with a notary, but, as she told VLADIVOSTOK1.RU, four days later it turned out that an autopsy in China was better not done, as it would take too long. So she was asked to certify a refusal of the autopsy. But the next day that too turned out to be unnecessary.

«And so we keep swinging on this seesaw all the time. There is a lot of fuss and nerves, but the result is zero. There was a dialogue recently: he called to say something urgent, and I said I would call back in 20 minutes. He said he would be busy. I offered to send me a voice message, and got the reply that he would not do that because he does not like voice messages. I don«t know whether he really doesn»t like them or simply did not want anything left in the correspondence», the captain«s daughter said.

Evgeny Karlov was only 55 and just two or three months ago he was still playing football. His daughter spoke with her father about 10 days before his death, and he said the voyage had dragged on and that he very much wanted to return home. He had no health complaints, did not drink, and had no heart problems or chronic illnesses.

The family is enduring the grief badly. According to Anastasia, her grandmother is especially worn down by empty promises and uncertainty, as the exact date for repatriating the body from China to Russia has still not been given. At first it was said to be a week, later a month or a month and a half, and now the timeframe is unknown.

«These empty promises now give hope that the body will be returned soon, then take it away again. Almost a month has passed since my father«s death, but there is still no progress with the repatriation of the body. The company blames everything on Chinese bureaucracy», Anastasia said.

The tragedy became known on 19 August, and later the Investigative Committee and the Trade Union Federation of Sakhalin Region began checks into the deaths of the sailors. We are publishing all news on the topic in a dedicated section.