3 more Filipinos held hostage by Nigerian pirates

03/16/2009

Three more Filipino sailors have reportedly been added to 35 of their compatriots who have been held hostage for some time now by Nigerian pirates who have hijacked the boats they were working on.

Reports on Sunday said about 30 heavily armed men in two speedboats hijacked an oil tanker contracted to Royal Dutch Shell early Saturday near Nigeria’s border with Cameroon and seized its three Filipino and Ukrainian crew.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) in Manila, however, said it was still verifying the report from its embassy in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

This is not the first kidnapping incident involving Filipinos in Nigeria. In previous years, a number of Filipino workers have been kidnapped in the Niger Delta region and were later on freed upon payment of ransom.

Nigeria is Africa’s leading oil exporter, producing 2.5 million barrels daily.

The Niger Delta, the main center of oil production in Nigeria, is a 74,000-square kilometer swathe of swamps, where more than 3,500 oil and gas installations are located.

The Philippine government presently imposes a travel ban to Nigeria, but a number of Filipinos still insist on going there by illegal means to gain jobs.

In three years, more than 200 foreigners have been taken hostage across the southern oil region of Africa’s biggest petroleum producer.

The waters of Nigeria and Somalia – where 35 Filipino crew of two ships are being held captive by Somali pirates – are considered the most dangerous maritime routes in Africa, it being infested by lawless elements and militants.

In November last year, Somali pirates operating off the coast of Kenya or Tanzania, at least 450 nautical miles from their homeland, seized their biggest prize yet by capturing a crude tanker the size of three soccer fields.

By seizing the Sirius Star, a Saudi-owned supertanker laden with crude oil, the ever more daring pirates defied an international naval action and showed that few ships sailing the Indian Ocean can be safe.

The South Korea-built, Liberia-registered ship’s operating company, Vela International, said the tanker, which was launched earlier last year, was loaded at its full capacity with two million barrels of oil, valued at $100 million.

According the US Navy, the hijacking of the Sirius Star was the furthest out to sea Somali pirates have attacked a ship.

The Sirius Star, owned by Saudi giant oil company Aramco, carried 25 crew members who came from Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia.

The pirates later on demanded for a ransom of $150 million for the vessel and another $100 million for its cargo

With more than 80 attacks since the start of 2008 alone, around a third of them successful, operators in the world’s merchant fleet have raised concerns that Somali piracy could start to have a serious impact on world trade.

Somali piracy, which started years ago with attacks targeting mainly trawlers fishing illegally in Somali waters, has acquired new dimensions over the past two years of violence and lawlessness on the mainland.

The International Maritime Bureau has reported that since January 2008, at least 83 ships have been attacked off Somalia, of which 33 were hijacked.

Pirates are well organized in the area where Somalia’s northeastern tip juts out into the Indian Ocean, preying on a key maritime route leading to the Suez Canal through which an estimated 30 percent of the world’s oil transits.

The pirates’ modus operandi is to approach the ship from the stern with two or three speedboats that far out-pace their prey and throw grapnels tied to rope ladders to hook the bridge and board.

Apart from the M/V Chemstar Venus, vessels still in the custody of Somali pirates are: the M/V Centauri, which had 26 Filipino crew and was hijacked Sept. 17 last year; the M/V Capt Stephanos, with 17 Filipino crew members on board, taken over Sept. 21, 2008; the M/V African Sanderling, with 21 Filipino crewmen, hijacked on Oct. 15, 2008; the M/V Stolt Strength, with 23 Filipino crew members, seized Nov. 10 last year; and fishing vessel Tianyu Number 8, which had three Filipino crew members and was seized Nov 14 last year.

The Philippines supplies a third of all of the world’s sailors. Some 350,000 Filipino sailors are employed all around the world, manning major oil tankers, luxury liners and passenger vessels. The route of some of the vessels they are employed on, though, expose them to pirate attacks and the Philippine government has been hard pressed to provide protection for them.

Manila has said banning Filipino sailors from certain risky regions would be difficult because of their mobility and the Philippine government’s lack of ability to monitor their movement.

Michaela P. del Callar

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