Ecoterra - Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor – Part XII. The MV MAERSK ALABAMA Predicament
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
April 09, 2009
Ecoterra Intl. – SMCM (Somali Marine & Coastal Monitor) Part XII
Ecoterra International – Updates, Statements & Clearinghouse Citations
A Voice from the Truth- & Justice-Seekers, who sit between all chairs, because they are not part of organized white-collar or no-collar-crime in Somalia or overseas, and who neither benefit from global naval militarization, from the illegal fishing and dumping in Somali waters or the piracy of merchant vessels, nor from the booming insurance business or the exorbitant ransom-, risk-management- or security industry, while neither the protection of the sea, the development of fishing communities or the humanitarian assistance to abducted seafarers and their families is receiving the required adequate attention, care and funding.
2009-04-09 23h55:19 UTC
EA Illegal Fishing and Dumping Hotline: +254-714-747090 (confidentiality guaranteed) - email: somalia[at]ecoterra.net
EA Seafarers Assistance Programme Emergency Helpline: SMS to +254-738-497979 or call +254-733-633-733
Clearing-house
News from sea-jackings, abductions or newly attacked ships
American-Somali Stand-off Continues while warships rush to the scene. The crew of the hijacked US-American vessel were reported to have retaken control of the ship, but pirates are continuing to hold the ship's captain hostage in a life boat. Danish owned and US-American operated MV MAERSK ALABAMA, a container ship of 14,120 gross tonnage under US-American flag with a 21 men crew of at least 20 U.S.-American nationals, who are said to be all unharmed according to the company that owns the vessel, had been sea-jacked this morning at 07h30 on the Indian Ocean off the capital of Somalia, Mogadishu and about 280 miles (450 kilometers) south-east of Eyl, a town in the northern Puntland region of Somalia. The vessel was en route to Mombassa, Kenya, when it was attacked about 500 kilometers (310 miles) off Somalia's coast, the statement issued by Maersk Line Ltd. said.
The 20 unarmed crew members fought back against the four hijackers and hours later regained control of their vessel, according to second mate Ken Quinn. Quinn, sounding harried in a terse mobile phone call to CNN, said the crew had released one of the pirates they had tied up for 12 hours. But the hijackers were refusing to return Captain Richard Phillips. "Right now, they want to hold our captain for ransom and we're trying to get him back", Quinn told the US network. "He's in the ship's lifeboat", he said, explaining the four pirates had taken the lifeboat off the Maersk Alabama and that Phillips was in touch with his crew via ship's radio. "So now we're just trying to offer them whatever we can. Food. But it's not working too good". Quinn added: "We have a coalition (vessel) that will be here in three hours. So we're just trying to hold them off for three more hours and then we'll have a warship here to help us". Quinn said that all four pirates were on the lifeboat, after sinking their own boat after they seized the container vessel.
Earlier, the crew took one pirate hostage, trying to swap him for their captain, but the deal went wrong, he told the American CNN news channel. Though the ship is the sixth seized within a week in the dangerous region around Africa, Cmdr. Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, said it was the first pirate attack "involving U.S. nationals and a U.S.-flagged vessel in recent memory". No American merchant vessel has been attacked by pirates since 1804 during the North African Barbary Wars. US-American President Barack Obama's chief spokesman said the White House was assessing a course of action. Press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that officials there monitoring the incident closely. Said Gibbs: "Our top priority is the personal safety of the crew members on board". The White House offered no other immediate details about what actions it was considering. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said there has not yet been any communications from the pirates for ransom. But he would not go into military plans. "I'm not going to speculate on any future military actions", Whitman said, when asked what the U.S. military may do. Whitman said there are still no U.S. Navy ships within view of the vessel, and instead they are still "hundreds of miles away. "The nearest U.S. Navy warship was about 300 nautical miles away at the time of the hijacking", other U.S.-American government sources said. No action has been taken so far, a spokesman for the U.S. military's 5th Fleet in Bahrain said first, according to CNN. "There is a task force present in the region to deter any type of piracy, but the challenge remains that the area is so big and it is hard to monitor all the time", 5th Fleet spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen said. US Army Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Hibner, a Pentagon spokesperson, said then later on Wednesday that the US Navy destroyer Bainbridge was en route to the scene.
The cargo ship is directly owned and operated by a Maersk subsidiary in Norfolk, Virginia, Maersk spokesman Michael Storgaard said. "We have very strict policies on the vessel ... crews are trained to handle these types of situations", Storgaard said from Maersk's headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark. He said the company is in the process of contacting the crew members' relatives and setting up assistance for them. No ITF agreement regulates the conditions for the sailors on board, but at least 12 of the Americans aboard the Maersk Alabama are members of the Seafarers International Union, spokesman Jordan Biscardo said. The union is trying to get as much information on the situation as it can, he said. "It goes without saying we're deeply concerned and we're closely monitoring the story", Biscardo said. Biscardo would not immediately release the names of the union members aboard the vessel. The Seafarers International Union represents unlicensed United States merchant mariners sailing aboard U.S.-flag vessels. No action has been taken so far against the pirates, according to a spokesman for the U.S. military's 5th Fleet in Bahrain. "There is a task force present in the region to deter any type of piracy, but the challenge remains that the area is so big and it is hard to monitor all the time", 5th Fleet spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen said. He said U.S.-flagged ships are not normally escorted by the military, unless they request it from the U.S. Navy.
The 155-metre (511-foot) vessel had been due to dock in the Kenyan port of Mombassa on April 16. The hijacked boxship is run out of the huge merchant and naval base of Norfolk by Maersk Line Ltd., a division of Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk Group and was carrying emergency relief to Mombassa, Kenya, when it was hijacked, said Peter Beck-Bang, spokesman for the Copenhagen-based container shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk, but analysts wondered, since relief food is usually shipped as bulk and not by a rather expensive container-ship. Peter Smerdon, a WFP spokesman in Nairobi, said the cargo included 4,097 tonnes of corn-soya blend which was destined for Somalia and Uganda and 990 tonnes of vegetable oil for refugees in Kenya. He said WFP had 232 containers with mainly the oil out of the 401 on board while the others belonged to USAID, Catholic Relief and [the rather unheard of] Serving God Ministries. Though the shipping company has had some Defense Department contracts it was said this time not to be on a Pentagon job when attacked, a governmental statement read. The high seas standoff drew an expression of concern from Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, who called on the world to unite to "end the scourge of piracy". (own sources, AFP, AP, Al-Jazeera, Pentagon, White House et al.)
Tragic Malaysian tug MASINDRA 7 with its barge ADM 1 in tow had been commandeered to Bandar-Beyla yesterday but left from there again after a shoot-out between the pirates on board. None of the 11 Indonesian crew-members was injured during the incident, which created another extremely dangerous situation in this case, which is a show-case for the fact that it can in many cases not just be left to ship-owners, who are not qualified or willing to solve a situation and to handle the negotiations but rather have only their only financial gain in mind instead of caring for their crew.
The negotiations by Somali businessmen, who own the cargo, likewise have not succeeded yet to achieve the release of SEA PRINCESS II, moored 6nm off Garacad (south of Eyl).
MT STOLT-STRENGTH is still stuck off Harardheere without fuel for her generators while a stand-off between the pirates, different local groups and the crisis-team in the Philippines continues unabated. Officials from the Transitional Federal Government warned local militias not to attack the vessel, which is held by a pirate group from another Somali clan, because it carries a potentially dangerous cargo. Phosphoric acid is corrosive but does not burn itself, though it can react with most metals to produce highly flammable hydrogen gas that may explode if ignited. During a fire, irritating/toxic phosphorus oxides may be generated. Tanks containing the acid may explode in the heat of a fire and leaks could create an environmental disaster.
The French yacht S/Y Tanit that was captured by pirates off Somalia over the weekend has been located, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Tuesday, without giving details of any rescue efforts. The sailing boat, the Tanit, carrying a couple with a 3-year-old child and two men was taken far from the coastline of the African country, Kouchner told RTL radio. "Yes, they have been located. This has been the case since yesterday", he said.
Among its 30 crew members of sea-jacked Taiwanese FV WIN FAR 161, the ship's skipper and first engineer are Taiwanese nationals, while five others are Chinese, 17 are Filipinos and six are Indonesian. In addition to trying to get the latest information about the ship through its representative office in South Africa, Taiwan's foreign ministry has sought the assistance of the U.K. Maritime Trade Organization, the maritime liaison office of America's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet, the Seychelles fishery bureau and the Somali harbour bureau in rescuing the hijacked Kaohsiung-based long-liner. Asked whether the ship has sent out a distress signal, Chen said the incident was reported back to the ship's owner in Taiwan by three other fishing vessels of the same company working in the area. They all returned to the Seychelles immediately after the incident occurred. As to whether the Chinese government has offered to assist, Chen said so far no such offer has been made but the ministry is actively seeking help from all types of channels. The Taiwan longliner was hijacked and used to hijack other fishing vessels in the area, the International Maritime Bureau said.
But other sources said that the reported attack on another vessel of the group did not succeed and the sea-jacked vessel was later seen by aerial surveillance leaving the area, while having a catamaran in tow. It is, however, assumed that the fishing vessel as well as the catamaran will be used to seize other ships.
Warning
An Egyptian fishing vessel has been reported to operate along the Gulf of Aden coast off northern Somalia as mother-ship and decoy for piracy. This vessel actually has not been hi-jacked by Somali pirates but was hired by a pirate gang against cash deriving from an earlier ransom payment. The gang works now together with the crew on their piracy expeditions. A so far not fully confirmed report indicated already one successful hi-jacking by this team with an abduction of the crew (possibly 3 men) from a sailing boat into the mountains south of Eleeyo, while the vessel took off again to target the next victim.
A luxury yacht MS AL-BURAK went on fire today on 08th April at the dry dock at Mombassa harbour in Kenya next to a Kenyan naval vessel. Though it was said that the fire started from the engine room, foul play can not yet be ruled out, since investigations are ongoing.
With the latest captures and releases now still at least 17 (18 with an unnamed sole Barge which drifted ashore, 19 with JAIKUR I whose crew is still held in Mogadishu harbour) foreign vessels with a total of not less than 297 crew members accounted for (of which 118 are confirmed to be Filipinos) are held in Somali waters and are monitored on our actual case-list, while several other cases of ships, which were observed off the coast of Somalia and have been reported or had reportedly disappeared without trace or information, are still being followed. Over 134 incidences (including attempted attacks, averted attacks and successful sea-jackings) have been recorded for 2008 with 49 fully documented, factual sea-jacking cases (for Somalia, incl. presently held ones) and the mistaken sinking of one vessel by a naval force.
For 2009 the account stands at 52 averted or abandoned attacks and 14 sea-jackings on the Somali/Yemeni pirate side as well as one wrongful attack by friendly fire on the side of the naval forces. Mystery pirate mother-vessels Athena/Arena and Burum Ocean as well as not fully documented cases of absconded vessels are not listed in the sea-jack count until clarification. Several other vessels with unclear fate (also not in the actual count), who were reported missing over the last ten years in this area, are still kept on our watch-list, though in some cases it is presumed that they sunk due to bad weather or being unfit to sail. In the last four years, 22 missing ships have been traced back with different names, flags and superstructures.
Directly piracy related news
Six suspected Somali pirates captured by French troops in Somalia last year lost an appeal on Monday in which they argued that their arrest and transfer to France were unauthorized, a court source told Reuters. The six men are accused of attacking a French yacht and holding its 30 crew hostage for a week last April. They have been placed under investigation for hijacking a ship, organized robbery, kidnapping and forming a criminal association. They argued that they had been arrested and transferred without the proper judicial steps or authorization by the Somali state. The court ruled that their arrest was justified and described it as a "defense operation". If found guilty, the pirates could face a life sentence. The six men told French investigators they were part of a "sea militia" with a written code of conduct that banned mistreatment of hostages, notably sexual abuse. While Germany had first called for an international court to be set up to prosecute the pirates, the United Kingdom first, then the United States and lately the European Union signed an accord with Kenya on putting suspects on trial in that East-African state, thereby allowing also Germany to choose that route, which - however - is questionable, since the jailing at Kenya's infamous Shimo-la-Tewa maximum security prison - known also for arbitrary killings by prison warders - must be seen already as death sentence due to the high number of HIV infected inmates. The men were seized by French troops in the coastal desert after allegedly fleeing with part of the ransom.
Seven alleged pirates walked this afternoon the plank from the German naval ship RHEINLAND-PFALZ to the security cells of Mombassa in Kenya. The vessel delivered the accused into the hands of the jurisdiction of this former British colony after a lengthy legal battle behind closed curtains in Germany. The timing of the delayed vessel is just right to bring the seven Somalis in front of the judge tomorrow morning and before the long Easter Weekend.
Illegal fisheries and related issues
We Need to Stop Eating the Oceans - Commentary by Captain Paul Watson
The Oceans are like the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg. As long as it was alive it laid a golden egg each day but then the greedy farmer decided to kill it to get all the gold inside and found nothing and the Goose laid no more golden eggs because it was dead.
For centuries, the oceans have fed humankind. But in the last century, human greed has raped and pillaged oceanic eco-systems remorsefully with an ecological ignorance that is staggeringly insane.
I don't eat fish because I am an ecologist and I have seen the diminishment of fish in the seas all of my life. I was raised in a fishing village and I was raised on a diet of cod, sardines, mackerel, smelts, clams, lobsters, flounders, and trout. I have seen with my own eyes the steady diminishment of fish, lobsters, and crustaceans. And what I ate as a child I choose not to eat today for the simple reason that there are too many of us on land eating the remaining few of them that live in the seas.
The fisherman has now become one of the most ecologically destructive occupations on the planet. It's time to put aside the outdated image of the hardy, independent, salt-of-the-sea, and hard-working fisherman working courageously to feed society and support his family.
No longer does the average fishermen go to sea in dories with lines and small nets. Today's industrial fishermen operate multi-million dollar vessels equipped with complex and expensive technological gear designed to hunt down and catch every fish they can find.
One manufacturer of electronic fish locators (Rayethon) even boasts that with their product, "the fish can run but they can't hide".
And for the fish, there is no safe place as poachers hunt them down mercilessly, even in marine reserves and sanctuaries.
We humans have waged an intensive and ruthless exploitation on practically every species of fish in the sea and they are disappearing. If we don't put an end to industrialized fishing vessels and heavy gear very soon, we will kill the oceans and in so doing, we will kill ourselves.
Scientists this week revealed that widespread malnutrition is affecting the fish, bird, and animal populations of our oceans. Not only are we depleting their populations, we are starving the survivors.
We are feeding fish to cats, pigs, and chickens, and we are sucking tens of thousands of small fish from the sea to feed larger fish raised in cages. House cats are eating more fish than seals; pigs are eating more fish than sharks; and factory-farmed chickens are eating more fish than puffins and albatross.
With other factors like increased acidification, global warming, chemical pollution, and ozone depletion causing plankton populations to decline, we are waging a global assault on all life in our oceans. The fish cannot compete with our excessive demands. We have already removed 90% of the large commercial fish from the sea. Chinese demand for shark fins is destroying practically every species of shark in the ocean.
Whereas the fishing industry once targeted and destroyed the large fish, they are now focusing on the smaller fish, the fish that have always fed the larger fish. Of the top ten fisheries in the world today, seven of them now target the small fish. If the fish are too small to feed to people, they are simply ground up into fishmeal to feed domestic animals and farm raised salmon or tuna.
Aquaculture has also now emerged as the most wasteful utilization of fish and is the economic engine driving the intensive exploitation of small fish.
And now Japanese and Norwegian fisheries are extracting tens of thousands of tons of plankton from the sea to convert into a protein rich animal feed.
This week a report on the State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture released by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) concludes that 80% of all marine fish stocks are currently fully exploited, overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion; including stocks of the 7 largest prey fisheries. Very few marine fish populations remain with the potential to sustain production increases, and more have now reached their limit than ever before.
The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is not taking an animal rights position on this issue when we say that people must stop eating fish and stop eating meat that fish are fed to. Our position is based solely on the ecological reality that commercial fishing is destroying our oceans.
We all know this. We are all aware of this diminishment. We feel it in our gut. The ecological reality is not only staring us in the face, it is kicking us in the teeth. The problem is that we are in absolute denial and we refuse to acknowledge that by stripping life from the seas, we will be undermining the foundation for our survival on land.
This denial is so entrenched that even Greenpeace serves fish to their crew onboard their ships while undertaking campaigns to oppose over-fishing.
The Kaiyapo people of Brazil call those who destroy the forests "termite people" because they gobble up the trees. In the oceans we have human parasites sucking the life out of the ocean and giving nothing back. We humans have become the parasitic bloodsuckers of the ocean and when we kill our hosts, as we will surely do the way we are presently going, then we ourselves will die.
For a long time, I wondered why I even have bothered to speak out about these concerns to a society that refuses to acknowledge this reality and simply dismisses any talk of over-exploitation as radical extremism. For decades, I have endured this extremism of apathy and ecological ignorance.
This last week in Paris at the Sustainability Conference I spoke of these things to a room full of journalists and when I called for a closure of all commercial fishing in the Mediterranean, I was pleasantly surprised that not a single journalist disagreed nor questioned me for making such a radical demand. In fact, my announcement was greeted with applause.
The public is becoming aware of the gravity of the ecological predicament that threatens life in the sea. And this is very encouraging. I can't think of anything more important than the preservation of diversity in our oceans. Perhaps we can adapt to global warming, and perhaps we can survive a mass extinction even of species on land. But I know one thing to be an ecological certainty and that is if we kill the oceans - we kill ourselves.
In diversity is the preservation of life.
We must stop eating the oceans. Eating fish is for all intents and purposes - an ecological crime. There are no oceanic sustainable fisheries - not a one. That little sustainability card that some people carry around to pretend to be ecologically correct consumers is simply a fraud, an attempt to make us feel good as we continue to eat the seas.
Now I know that some people are not going to like what I am saying, but then again, I have never written or spoken for the purpose of winning popularity contests. I don't try to be all things to all people. I aim to be ecologically correct in my thinking and from any perspective that I have viewed it. That, coupled with my observations of the steady and now escalating diminishment of life in the sea since I was a boy sitting on the end of the dock in Passamaquoddy Bay to now, and where I voyage through all the oceans of the world trying to defend life in the sea, I see the writing on the wall in big bold letters. The signs look ominous indeed, dangerously so.
Some may think that a call to ban all commercial fishing is radical. I view it as a very conservative and essential policy that we must implement to save the oceans and ourselves.
Am I concerned about the fishermen and their families? I am not without sympathy for their situation but I am far more concerned for the future survival of humanity and the oceans. We simply need to put an end to an industry and an occupation that is literally undermining the life support systems of this planet. This requires sacrifices, but sacrificing a job is preferable by far than sacrificing the future for all of us.
We need to consider the needs of the fishes and we need to give them the space and the time to recover from the terrible slaughter we have inflicted upon all the species that live in the sea.
I am tired of hearing the excuses of fishermen that the seals or the dolphins have diminished the fish numbers. They want to take us for fools to buy into this unscientific scapegoat argument. The fish are gone because they, the fishermen, took them, and took them and took them without mercy. And now like Wall Street bankers they come begging for subsidies and getting them because politicians for the most part suffer from homopechephobia, or a political fear of fishermen, who if they don't get what they want tend to riot and threaten.
They need to be treated as the ocean destroying thugs that they are. The fishing industry needs to go extinct before they cause a pattern of irreversible extinctions and loss of diversity in our oceans.
If an ecological collapse occurs because of the removal of a pivotal species or species, we won't be worrying about jobs. We'll be worrying that our fellow man will be hunting and eating us. If that occurs, the words that Jesus Christ once said would have become perversely very true indeed when he said to the fishermen, "I will make you to become fishers of men" (Mark 1-17).
Captain Paul Watson - Founder and President of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (1977-2009)
"The Spanish freezer fleet hopes the new command of the European Union (EU) military mission deployed in Indian Ocean waters to combat piracy, which as of last weekend was assumed by Spanish Captain Juan Garat Carame for the next four months, will be sensitive to the danger and harassment the fleet is subjected to by the pirates", the Spanish Fisheries Confederation (CEPESCA) stated in a press release. On behalf of the National Association of Freezer Tuna Vessel Owners (ANABAC) and the Big Frozen Tuna Vessels Producers Association (OPAGAC), CEPESCA describes the 1,300 crew members of the 54 Community fleet vessels as being "worried and frightened" by the new pirate attacks in the south-east of the African nation, far from the gulf of Aden. "Both ANABAC and OPAGAC are calling attention to the sense of alarm the latest pirate attacks have sown among the crews operating in the Indian Ocean", the association stated.
CEPESCA reiterated its request for the establishment of a secondary Atalanta Operation command centre in Mahe, Seychelles, or Mombassa, Kenya that would "guarantee the protection of the Spanish and EU fleet that operate in the Indian Ocean. CEPESCA are insisting that the European bloc shift the operational range of the its anti-piracy patrol programme, Operation Atalanta, to the south and east of Somalia to guarantee the safety of the European fleet there. This shows clearly where the real interests are: European taxpayers money shall be used to further protect rogue and often criminal fishing ventures of European businessmen. To prove that such conclusion would be wrong, could be easy for states like Spain and France by:
a) Declaring openly that the governments would recognize and respect the 200nm Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Somalia.
b) Implementing a strict surveillance of the Spanish- and French- (and other European) flagged vessels by imposing Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) Systems on them, which requires vessels to automatically transmit identity and position with date/time at 6-hour intervals and to centrally and transparently monitor these units, which must be fixed at the vessel in a way that the units can not be removed and transmit false positions while being taken off the vessels and kept e.g. on the mother-ship outside the 200nm EEZ, while the hunters without trace venture into the Somali waters on fish-poaching missions.
c) Imposing, if rules are violated, serious legal consequences for vessels of the national fleet as well as vessels, whose ownership and operations or for that purpose imports of marine products have links to to the European country, but hide behind a flag of convenience.
d) Adhering and fostering instead of fighting control mechanisms like the FAO proposed plan of action, monitoring and controlling the origin of the harvest of marine products at ports of convenience.
e) And last but not least assisting in institution-building of the Somali government in order to re-instate proper coast-guards, monitoring and fisheries management as well as the revival of the Somali fisheries industry.
But as long as Spanish military Orion planes assisting in Operation Atalanta just do observe illegally fishing vessels from Spain, Greece, France or other European countries in the Somali waters and do absolutely nothing against it, the fisheries wars will continue - also with piracy as an answer. Crime triggers Counter-Crime, if justice can not prevail.
"Recent activity suggests that pirate activity off the east coast of Somalia has increased. Attacks have occurred more than 400 nautical miles offshore", states a warning issued by US Pentagon officials. The warning suggests ships traveling along the coast of Somalia and Kenya move to the east side of the Seychelles Islands and Madagascar, hundreds of miles east of those coastlines. "We continue to highlight the importance of preparation by the merchant mariners and the maritime industry in this message", Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of the Combined Maritime Forces, said in a statement and added: "International naval forces alone will not be able to solve the problem of piracy at sea. Piracy is a problem that starts ashore". Well, the latter statement he made already since a year and nothing has been done to help improving the situation in the coastal villages and towns at the 3,300 km long seashore of Somalia.
Who are the Real Pirates of East Africa and Somalia? The U.S. African Chamber of Commerce (USACC) seeks support from the international community to put a stop to the ongoing illegal entrance within East African waters by foreign tankers. While the media heavily covers news stories on Somali pirate ships, illegal trespassing within Somali and East African waters by tankers from the world's richest countries never receives media commentary. On a regular basis foreign tankers illegally enter Somali and other East African waters to dump chemical waste and conduct illegal fishing; taking advantage of the lack of a unified government in Somalia and robbing resources from defenseless nations. So who are the real pirates?
U.S. African Chamber of Commerce is seeking immediate attention to this issue, requesting that NATO, the European Union and the IGAD-AU begin immediate investigation and the enforcement of commerce regulations that respect the sovereign nations of East Africa. All tankers entering Somali and East African waters must be held accountable for truthful registration, declaration of exports, and payment of applicable taxes. Illegal entrance and activities must be curtailed and perpetrators assessed heavy fines. The USACC is the Leading Advocacy Organization for U.S. African Relations and promotes Emerging Markets. The USACC is the umbrella organization for African Chambers of Commerce and Professional Trade and Business Associations throughout the United States and abroad. Contact: www.usafricanchamber.com
No real peace in sight yet
According to the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) there is an urgent process that is unfolding which entails extension of the outer limits of the continental shelf from two hundred nautical miles to three hundred and fifty nautical miles. This process involves that coastal states should submit supporting scientific document and technical data to the UN authority, Commission on the limits of the Continental shelf (CLCS) by May 13, 2009. It appears that the Governments of Kenya and Yemen have prepared document which they have submitted to the said commission. The Kenyan and Yemeni document are troubling from the Somali vantage point of the Somali as they infringe on what is and has been Somali territorial waters. In particular, the documents of the Government of Kenya clearly violate the spirit and the word of the UN technical directives, which specify that the delimitation of the coastal waters must follow a line that perpendicular to coast. Instead what the Kenyan documents claim is a line that mimics latitudinal lines which an angle much less than 90 degrees. We are deeply troubled by the report that elements of the Somali Transitional Federal Government are pre-disposed to support the claims of Kenya and undermine the legitimate claims of the Somali people. We thus, urge the Somalia and good friends of the Somali people to challenge these developments so that justice will prevail. This is a serious matter and requires an immediate halt to the Kenyan presentation to the UN Commission so that the Somali people will have the opportunity to produce their own documents fully supported by competent technical team. The following technical report produced by the volunteers of SomaliTalk.com provides the details of what is transpiring. http://www.somalitalk.com/2009/may/13/english.html Somali Version: http://somalitalk.com/2009/may/13/
The Deputy Minister of Information in Puntland, Abdishakur Mire Adan, said he is concerned about the agreement between the Kenyan government and the Somali government in which the Kenyan government would collect taxes for Somalia. Speaking to the media in his office in Garowe, Abdishakur added that the Somali government chose not to discuss the Somali islands that are currently occupied by the Kenyans but instead signed this agreement with the Kenyans.
"A government collecting taxes on behalf of another government that is something that has not been seen anywhere, ever. We are very surprised by the agreement and we do not understand what are the underlying reasons for this agreement are. The Somali government should have instead spoken to Kenya about the [Somalia] islands that it is occupying" said the assistant minister. The assistant minister also spoke on the Puntland administration´s confusion regarding the national unity government in Somalia. The assistant minister asked what exactly this national unity government means. He asked if it means the reconciliation of the government and the opposition or if there are any other issues [whose meaning is to conceal other underlying issues]. He said the Puntland administration would very much like to get a clarification on the term government of national unity. The governments of Kenya and Somalia recently signed an agreement in which the Kenyan government is to collect taxes on Kenyan goods being exported to Somalia on behalf of the Somali government.
Eight people have died and 22 others who were on smugglers' boats are missing after running into trouble off the Yemeni coast. One boat said to have been carrying 40 Somalis capsized as passengers disembarked. Only 20 of them were known to have made it to shore, said William Spindler, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In the second incident, a boat carrying 23 migrants hit rough seas and took on water, according to Afrol-News. Witnesses had said some of the migrants suffocated after the smugglers covered the passenger area with a tarpaulin to prevent water getting in, said Spindler. The two boats had set out from near the northern city of Bossasso in Somalia. This year, 339 boats carrying more than 17 000 people have made the perilous voyage across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen and at least 71 people are known to have died. "People pay between $80 and $120 for the crossing", Spindler said.
Somaliland troops have fired on opposition party demonstrators in the capital Hargeisa as they marched in front of the party´s headquarters. The Somaliland's opposition leader and Kulmiye chairman Ahmed Mohamed Silanyo, who was among hundreds of supporters walking between the Kulmiye party headquarters to his residence in Hargeisa said a girl was injured during the interception. Mr. Silanyo accused the government of breaking the constitutional provisions by postponing the elections, saying his party will not tolerate intimidations by police as it protests against undemocratic practices in government. Local reports said angry demonstrators of the Kulmiye opposition party of Somaliland took to the streets of Hargeisa to show their anger against the government which the House of the Guurti, the upper house of the parliament, extended the time of the government with six months. They also chanted anti-President Dahir Riyale slogans, demanding his resignation from office after failing to hold the presidential elections on time. However, Mr. Riyale has rejected opposition demands to resign, arguing that the House of Guurti's decision for a six-month term extension that ends in October 2009 is legal under the Somaliland's constitution. He has vowed to step down only to an elected president. Somaliland's constitutional crisis began in mid 2008, when the House of Guurti gave Mr. Riyale's government a one-year term extension. Somaliland unilaterally declared independence from the rest of Somalia in 1991, but it has not been recognized internationally yet.
Impacting news from the global village
UNHCR faults Kenya government over refoulement of Somali asylum seekers. UN refugee agency, UNHCR, Tuesday expressed concern here over what it called a growing trend by the Kenyan authorities to forcibly return Somali asylum seekers to their country, AricaNews reports. The concern follows an incident last week in which asylum seekers, among them nine men, eight women and 14 children, who were traveling by bus to Dadaab refugee camps in northern Kenya, were forcibly returned to Somalia. In a statement signed by a spokesman, Mr. Ron Redmond, the agency said, "UNHCR received information from a government official that the military intercepted the bus and took the asylum seekers to Dadaab Police Station then later escorted the bus back to Dobley, a centre near the Somali border". It said its intervention failed to elicit a satisfactory response from the authorities. "When we requested intervention, we were informed that the police and military continue to return asylum seekers to Somalia, acting on instructions from the authorities in the Provincial Headquarters in Garissa", UNHCR said in its statement.
It said Kenyan police at the Dadaab refugee camps confirmed that there was a similar incident 23 March, when 61 asylum seekers - among them 14 children - were arrested by military officers and taken to Dadaab Police Station and later returned to Liboi refugee camps. "Earlier in January, three asylum seekers were forcibly returned to Somalia by the authorities", the statement said.
Consequently, the agency said it had sent a formal complaint to the Minister of Immigration and Registration of persons to protest such actions. "Our concern is that despite bringing such cases to the attention of the government, no action has been taken. UNHCR reiterates that the Kenyan government must adhere to and show full respect for the principle of non-refoulement, as enshrined in Kenya´s Refugees Act and International Law, with regard to Somali asylum seekers in particular", it said.
Darfur genocide continues without real U.S. intervention
Chris Knutson
Millions of people died in the Holocaust during World War II. We learned of these horrors, but has it done any good? Let us pretend that we could go back in time and save a quarter of those victims that senselessly lost their lives to evil. Would you? Unfortunately, we don't have the luxury of time travel and can no longer save the Jews, but what can we do today? You are probably aware that there is a genocide occurring in Sudan. What you probably didn't know is what follows.
In 1994, Rwanda had its genocide. Historically, there have been two major groups within the nation; the Hutu's and the Tutsi's. For social and political motives, the majority Hutu's began exterminating the minority Tutsi's. There were over 300 US Marines on the Ground along with a formidable UN peacekeeping force on the eve of the genocide. Unfortunately, 10 Belgians were killed, so the UN, made up largely of Belgian troops, cut and ran from the region. With heightening violence, the United States ordered all US civilian and military personal out of Rwanda, leaving a small ill-equipped UN peace-keeping unit. Had the Marines remained, there would have been no genocide, but this was not in the United States "national interests". In the next 100 days, 800,000 Tutsi men, women and children were systematically exterminated by the Hutu extremists. The world watched, as 800 people vanished from the earth each day and not even the United States intervened. The world knew what was occurring. Why didn't Clinton leave the Marines in place, or send in a few hundred troops in order to save hundreds and thousands of lives? Politics. Ever seen Blackhawk down? The movie where 18 Marines were killed attempting to prevent similar atrocities in Somalia? Clinton was seeking reelection in 1996 and feared that intervention in Rwanda would prove politically unpopular. Later, Clinton traveled to Rwanda and acknowledged the tremendous loss of life, but he never apologized for his non-intervention policy. "Never again", he promised. Clinton always had the tendency to lie.
At the first round of climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, a delegate from the Philippines noted that the Christmas bonus of a Wall Street banker was higher than the amount of money allocated to the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), reports IRIN. "Funding remains the key issue", said Saleemul Huq, head of the climate change group at the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). The talks to draft a new climate change treaty were held under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and ended on 8 April with little progress.
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From: http://lloydslist.com/ll/news/crew-regains-control-of-maersk-alabama/20017637684.htm
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