Spain should take a lesson from America - NO MORE BLACKMAIL
As some of you might know, last week Somali pirates seized a Spanish fishing vessel and took it’s 26 sailors hostage. Yesterday, they released the crew, and I strongly suspected a ransom was paid. Unfortunately, I was right. $1.2 million dollars were paid to the pirates, which will now help fund future piracy and kidnappings, prompting even more payments.
There needs to be an international agreement over this: Ransom needs to stop. No ransom should ever be paid, ever again. If the monetary incentive disappeared, then piracy and kidnappings would disappear as well.
Of course, there is always the issue of how I would feel if my own family members were taken hostage. My first instinct would of course be to pay the money now, safeguarding lives, and worry about justice later. But there is a difference between what benefits me and what is better for society’s greater good. People will always look out for their own interests above others, which is why we have laws in the first place. Moreover, if we had an international agreement ending the payment of ransoms, and everyone stuck to it, then the issue would become moot.
This has striking parallels to piracy prior to the early 19th century.
Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were semi-independent states under the Ottoman empire, and they engaged in heavy piracy throughout the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Like today, vessels were seized and captives taken for ransom. But unlike today, people who weren’t ransomed were often sold into slavery. Some of them were European women who ended up in harems in the Middle East. This slavery of Westerners by North Africans is a too seldom-discussed episode in history.
By the 18th century, European states were making blackmail payments (which they called a “license tax”) to protect their ships from attack. They figured it was cheaper in the long run than aggressively going after the pirates themselves. Prior to 1776, American vessels fell under the British agreements. But after the War of Independence, Americans were on thei