Pirates of the Indian Ocean

Skipping the singleness topic for a brief look at something completely different:

Bizarre as it seems, I have good reason to take note of the steady trickle of news involving Somali pirates. A week ago I passed through Denmark as news broke about a pirate attack in which seven Danish citizens were taken hostage. Among them a family with three teenagers. None of the articles I read quite portrayed my own first reaction to this, which can be summarized as:

What. The. Feck.

And more specifically: WHY. THE. FECK?!

Why the frack, why-y-y-y-y-y? Why do people sail their yachts in this region? I’ve asked myself this hearing of middle-aged couples getting themselves kidnapped; I ask it ten times louder when families with children sail this route. Isn’t it a tad irresponsible to take kids sailing in the north-western Indian Ocean these days? Not just because of what you might put your kids through – trauma even if you all come through safe and sound, plus piffling details like risking their lives, or risking them becoming orphaned. But spare a thought for the people who have to patrol the area, who have to go negotiate your release and (hopefully) get you home... My main concern, though, is that you sponsor a growing criminal enterprise. Ransom money feeds straight into the piracy industry, increasing its power, giving them the (a) incentive and (b) means to keep going and to expand their hunting ground.

Aren’t pirates enough of a safety and economic issue for the maritime world* without pleasure sailors adding to the problem? Why should a little yacht venture where big ships fear to tread?  The amateur sailor contribution to pirate income may be a mere drop in the (Indian) Ocean - but it is an avoidable drop. There are enough people who have work-related reasons to enter [with trepidation] into the piracy high-risk zone; or want to but are forced to avoid it. Like seamen on commercial freighters. Or fishermen. Or scientists.

Not only big companies with valuable cargo or rich Westerners are targets of pirate attacks. Last year I heard radio interviews with poor Indian fishermen who had been kidnapped. And with their wives: what went through their minds during the months when their husbands were gone and they didn't know if they would ever get their loved ones – and their main source of income – back...

So when people take their rosy-cheeked teenagers for adventurous voyages via the Gulf of Aden, and they get taken hostage, and some hundred thousand euros are paid in ransom, and this keeps the engines of the Somali piracy venture running for some additional hundreds of nautical miles, it ultimately affects other innocent people who get their livelihood from that ocean!

I'm not saying "let them rot" or "let them die" - once someone’s kidnapped of course the prime objective should be to get them home, alive and healthy. Stupidity is not punishable by law in our countries; certainly not by capital punishment. But if you plan a sailing holiday: please, SKIP the Gulf of bloody Aden!



Update: Since I wrote this, there has been an attempt at freeing the Danish family; 3 pirates and 8 soldiers killed...

*>700 people currently held hostage!