Seafarers need a modified bill of rights to include piracy defense, Part 1

A client recently suggested that, along with signing Foreign Articles, all seamen embarking on a voyage should be required to sign a complete indemnification letter stating, "I accept the fact that I will be at great risk of bodily harm, will be at fault in a pirate attack for not following Best Management Practices (BMPs), and may not return home."

And he was dead serious when he said this, no pun intended.

As a law firm representing former hostages of the Maersk Alabama, we are well familiar with the relatively defenseless position mariners are placed on their vessels when transiting High Risk Areas (HRAs). Piracy rages out of control amidst record numbers of successful hijackings. In 2010 so far 793 hostages have been taken, which is on pace to break last year’s record total. Of course, the vast majority of those reported incidents (more on this ahead) have taken place in the rapidly expanding pirate alley of the Indian Ocean mushrooming well south and east of the former central area of the Gulf of Aden.

International shipping coalitions like BIMCO remain steadfastly against allowing well trained armed security teams on ships in HRAs, insisting that BMPs consisting of crew vigilance, fire hoses, zigzag maneuvers and other non-lethal practices are sufficient to deter increasingly violent pirates using AK-47s and RPGs. Last week, the EU NAVFOR military anti-piracy task released a statement essentially blaming seafarers themselves for being hijacked because they failed to adequately follow BMPs. Despite numerous attacks being foiled by just the presence of armed security on the decks of ships, industry continues to argue against the carriage of firearms because of the so-called “escalation of violence” which is often cited, but never proven.

Piracy expert Mikhail Voitenko, editor of the Russian maritime journal Sovfrakht who recently fled his native country after blowing the lid off the Arctic Sea cover-up, is asking why BIMCO, IMO and other organizations “repeatedly say pure lies about ‘armed guards on board lead to violence escalation’ ” when the sight of armed guards has been proven to drive off attacks?

The trend is for shipping companies to build “citadels” inside the superstructures of the vessels which are hidden rooms to provide longer term protection of the crew when an attack is imminent. Their purpose is to deny the pirates access to the crew and make it easier for military responders to retake the vessel without putting them at risk.

Voitenko and other piracy experts, though, maintain that citadels are really potential deathtraps once assailants start using grenades to blow the doors. Rumors say that pirates are already carrying C4 explosives.

The actual number of pirate attacks is believed by many experts to be much greater than what’s being reported. Some say less than 10% are reported.

Yet, operators continue to put crews in the literal line of fire in the Indian Ocean resulting in approximately 30 vessels and over 500 crewmembers being held at the present time.

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