Sunday, April 19, 2009

somali pirates toxic waste – Google Search.

Driving to work I was listening to a radio commentator reviewing the days papers. One of the headlines she was talking about was the Somali Pirates, discussing the article she read out a quote by a young Somali pirate, “Its because of our Lobster” she said and then moved onto the next story. Looking further into this story it appears there are a couple of types of pirate, the Somali fisherman and the western business man.

A consultant and analyst in Kenya, Mohamed Abshir Waldo, has written a paper called The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other?, looking at the root causes of the problem.

The “original” pirates, according to Waldo, “are the foreign trawlers and vessels who [have been] conducting illegal fishing on the Somali coast” since 1991. He also says that these same vessels have been dumping industrial, toxic, and nuclear waste in the water, ruining the Somali coast life. This was the reason “shipping piracy” emerged.

Evidence of such practices literally appeared on the beaches of northern Somalia when the tsunami of 2004 hit the country.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) reported the tsunami had washed up rusting containers of toxic waste on the shores of Puntland.

Award-winning journalist Johann Hari argues in his paper You Are Being Lied to about Pirates, that “more than USD 300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected sea.”

This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia – and it’s not hard to see why.

Tagged as: pirates, somali, toxic, waste

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