Threatening the economies of all trading nations, including Canada
The first pirates Capt. Steve Waddell encountered weren’t wearing puffy shirts, tri-cornered hats or as much dark eyeliner as Disney’s Jack Sparrow.
Instead they were decked out in Gucci watches and ill-fitting Armani suits, claiming to be Somali fishermen aboard a small, open-decked skiff Waddell and his crew confronted in the treacherous seas off the Horn of Africa.
“I’m not sure why they considered that pirate attire,” said Waddell, who in 2009 commanded the frigate HMCS Fredericton on one of Canada’s first anti-piracy naval missions to the region.
A Canadian boarding party confronted the skiff, confiscated guns and gasoline from the group, and sent them back to the Somali coast. Waddell watched as the Somalis high-fived each other, happy to be released, as they motored away from the warship.
“That’s the reality of anti-piracy operations off Somalia,” Waddell told an audience of lawyers with the Canadian Bar Association on Tuesday.
He and other experts, who spoke at the bar’s annual meeting in Halifax, say piracy is a serious, resurgent security issue that threatens the economies of all trading nations, including Canada.
Worse, solutions to the problem remain far from clear.
Among the thorny questions facing maritime and military lawyers is how modern-day pirates should be treated by Canadian forces and other state authorities: Are they criminals or foreign combatants? Can naval crews legally detain them, and if so, should they be accorded prisoner-of-war rights under the Geneva Convention? What about child pirates in the service of a pirate warlord?
Once pirates are arrested, should they be brought for prosecution back to Canada, where a pirate might make a refugee claim?
“Off the Horn of Africa, nine out of 10 pirates captured are released, because no state is willing to prosecute them,” says Simon Barker, an Ontario lawyer who specializes in admiralty law.
Barker says when most Canadians consider piracy, they imagine only the Hollywood stereotypes. To prove his point Barker took to the conference stage here wearing, along with his suit and tie, a skull-and-crossbones bandana on his head.
But kidding aside, he and other experts say Canada and other rich countries must get serious about the threats of piracy in the 21st century.
Pirates increasingly threaten commercial shipping in the South China Sea, off the coast of Nigeria, in the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean off Somalia.
The UN’s International Maritime Bureau (IMB) says there were 489 pirate attacks around the world in 2010, a 20 per cent increase over 2009.
So far this year, there have been 310 attacks, plus 487 crewmen taken hostage and seven crew killed by pirates.
The U.S.-based One Earth Future Foundation says the total costs of piracy to the global economy – factoring in lost cargoes, paid ransoms and piracy-insurance fees – are as much as $12 billion U.S. per year.
“In today’s world, this is an unacceptable situation,” says IMB director Pottengal Mukundan.
Mukundan says that while NATO and other naval forces from China, Russia and India are mounting serious efforts to patrol dangerous seas, pirates are simply growing bolder.
He says there has been a rapid rise in oil tanker hijackings this year off the coast of Benin, where pirates are siphoning off entire oil cargoes into smaller vessels, and then ransoming off crews for millions of dollars.
Somalian pirates are now operating from large “mother ships,” far offshore in the Indian Ocean, a vast area that’s difficult for foreign navies to patrol and secure.
“How do you police a region like that with 24 warships?” Waddell says. “That’s like taking 24 police cars and trying to patrol all of Canada. It’s impossible.”
Hugh Williamson, a professor of maritime law at Dalhousie University, says piracy ultimately requires political and economic solutions.
“You can’t solve piracy at sea,” he says. “The solution to Somali piracy will be setting up a stable government ashore where criminal gangs can no longer operate.”
While the problem may seem distant for Canadians, Waddell calls piracy a “critical issue for Canada.
“The products on Canadians’ grocery shelves don’t just come from within, they come from abroad, and with piracy disrupting trade, pushing up insurance rates, and forcing commercial mariners off the water because they no longer want to risk their lives – these are issues that will ultimately affect what we see on our shelves here, and how much we pay for them. We should get a little bit smarter about it.”
Source: Postmedia News