Naval War-games to Protect Fish-piracy and Cover Real Agenda – Ecoterra 100th Press Release Update

The latest developments concerning the MV FAINA piracy crisis and the overall phenomenon of the Somali piracy are to be found in the Ecoterra 100th Press Release Update that I republish herewith.

100th Update 2009-01-07 16h47:37 UTC

Ecoterra Intl. - Stay Calm & Solve it Peaceful & Fast !

Ecoterra International – Update & Media Release on the stand-off concerning the Ukrainian weapons-ship hi-jacked by Somali pirates and related news.

We also can make sea-piracy in Somalia an issue of the past - with empathy and strength and through coastal and marine development as well as protection!

New EA Seafarers Assistance Programme Emergency Helpline: +254-738-497979
East African Seafarers Assistance Programme - Media Officer: +254-733-385868

Day 105 - 2498 hours into the MV FAINA Crisis - Update Summary

Efforts for a peaceful release continued, but the now over three and a half months long stand-off concerning Ukrainian MV FAINA is not yet solved finally, though intensive negotiations have continued.

Russia shut off all gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine on Wednesday — leaving tens of thousands of people in more than a dozen European countries without heat during a winter cold snap. The EU accused both nations of holding consumers hostage in their contract dispute. The effects of the gas cutoff reverberated across the continent, where some countries have substantial reserves and others do not. In the Balkans, people celebrated Orthodox Christmas in churches lit by candles and scrambled to find other sources of heat for their homes as authorities cut off some gas to conserve supplies. Thousands of Bulgarians, Bosnians and Serbs were left in the cold and some companies and schools did not operate on Wednesday after Russian gas supplies were halted to southeastern Europe.

Maybe with this at Christmas Day some members of the Ukrainian Parliament get an idea how it is to be a hostage at the mercy of the stubborn and the ruthless. While in Ukraine is too cold - on MV FAINA it is too hot - in every respect.

Ecoterra Intl. repeats it's call to solve the FAINA and the SIRIUS STAR cases with first priority and peaceful in order to avert a human and environmental disasters at the Somali coast. Anybody encouraging hot-headed and concerning such difficult situations inexperienced and untrained gunmen or those, who believe they would be capable to try an attempt of a military solution, must be held fully responsible for the surely resulting disaster. The saga and secrecy surrounding MV FAINA must not - like in the MS ESTONIA case, which is the worst naval disaster in Europe since WWII - become the shroud for its 20 seafarers.

Clearing-house:

News from other abducted or newly attacked ships --------

Games Crazy People Play: Kidnapping, Pirating, and War - Naval War-games to protect Fish-piracy and to cover the real agenda !

Somali captors have freed a Turkish ship they hijacked off Somalia in return for ransom on Tuesday night, an official confirmed. Fehmi Ulgener, legal adviser of the company, said on Wednesday that the ship "M/V Yasa Neslihan" was freed after a deal was reached between officials from Turkish Yasa maritime company and pirates. The Marshall Island-flagged MV YASA NESLIHAN carrying 77,000 tons of iron ore from Canada to China was sea-jacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden on October 29, 2008. The owner of a Turkish ship commandeered off Somalia with 20 crew on board says pirates have freed the ship. The Yasa Holding Company says pirates freed the Yasa Neslihan freighter on Wednesday. The company earlier said the pirates had demanded a ransom for its return but it did not immediately say whether the company paid for the release. Its owners paid a ransom, Turkey's Anatolian news agency stated. Yasa officials had been negotiating with the ship's captors for its release and had paid an undisclosed amount of money as ransom, Ulgener told the news agency. The 20 all-Turkish crew were all safe, he said and added the vessel would resume its journey to China.

Sea-jacked, Egypt-managed MV BLUE STAR under St. Kitts & Navis flag with 28 Egyptian seafarers and Yemen-managed MT SEA PRINCESS II under Panama flag have arrived in Eyl - Puntland / Somalia the IMB-KL confirmed.

With the latest captures and releases now still at least 17 foreign vessels with a total of accounted for 348 crew members (of which 92 are 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 (incl. the presently held). For 2009 the account stands at 11 abandoned attacks and 2 sea-jackings. 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 related news --

French forces handed over 19 more captured pirates to Somali authorities on Tuesday as international navies stepped up their efforts to stamp out the hijackings. But the commander of the European Union naval task force in the region said increased patrols would not be enough. "Piracy cannot be eradicated fully by naval units. We need a political solution in Somalia which has to deal with peace restoration, law and order in Somalia", Commodore Antonios Papaioannou told Reuters in Kenya's port of Mombasa.

Nigerian defence spokesman Chris Jemitola said Nigerian troops were ready [for AMISOM], but the terms of engagement for the mission needed to be decided by politicians first. "Detailed instructions have still not been issued", he said. Also Uganda and Burundi have called for a stronger mandate to let its 3,200 peacekeepers protecting strategic sites in Somalia go on the offensive against any insurgents preparing attacks. Jean Ping, chairman of the AU Commission, said the AU was considering strengthening the mandate. He said Algeria was ready to help the extra troops deploy and Egypt had also offered logistical support.

The Japanese government will submit a bill to parliament to give the nation’s naval forces a legal basis to fight high-seas piracy, the Yomiuri Newspaper said. The bill, in response to an increase in ships seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia, would authorize the Japan Coast Guard and the Maritime Self-Defense Force to escort commercial ships and to fire on pirate vessels, the newspaper said, citing officials it didn’t name. Prime Minister Taro Aso’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the New Komei Party, its coalition partner, plan to submit the bill by March and seek passage in the current diet session, the newspaper said. Until the new antipiracy law is enacted, the government is eyeing the dispatch of MSDF vessels to waters off Somalia in accordance with the SDF Law as a stopgap measure, they said. The law is expected to consist of about six articles in line with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. Under current Japanese law, the use of force in seaborne policing activities is governed by the same principles that govern the use of force by police officers in the line of duty. This means JCG and MSDF members are not allowed to inflict physical harm on perpetrators except in self-defense or in the course of an emergency evacuation. But the new law will ease the restrictions on the use of arms, enabling them to fire on pirate ships during operations.

Shipping companies that quietly pay pirates’ ransoms to recover crew and cargo are only spurring more hijackings, the chief executive of leading Belgian shipping company, Exmar, said. "As long as democracy will give in on this kind of blackmail, we’ll never have a solution", said CEO Nicolas Saverys, a Belgian native, whose family has been in the maritime industry since 1828 and whose company ships 40 per cent of the world’s seaborne ammonia and 10 per cent of its liquefied petroleum gas. Although they are loath to declare it, shipping firms - via their insurance companies - have paid between $35-40 million in ransoms to pirates in 2008 so far, according to an estimate by Roger Middleton, a Somalia expert with London’s Chatham House think-tank. Saverys did not specify whether Exmar buys insurance to cover hijackings, but said he understands why many firms do. However, deterrents, not payouts, are the only real solution, he told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. Tankers like Exmar’s, laden with valuable petrochemicals, are the most attractive to the cash-hungry Somali pirates operating in the treacherous Gulf of Aden.