Foto: AFPGaddafi: Piraten verteidigen sich gegen den Westen.
Der libysche Präsident Muammar al-Gaddafi (66) ist neuer Vorsitzender der Afrikanischen Union. Er verteidigte die Piraterie vor Somalia als Verteidigung gegen "gierige Nationen des Westens".
Nairobi - Neuer Job, neue Provokation: Kaum ist der libysche Präsident Muammar al-Gaddafi (66) zum neuen Vorsitzenden der Afrikanischen Union (AU) gewählt worden, nimmt er die Piraten vor der somalischen Küste in Schutz. Die kenianische Zeitung „Daily Nation“ berichtete, Gaddafi habe bei seinem Antrittsbesuch im AU-Hauptquartier in der äthiopischen Hauptstadt Addis Abeba gesagt: Die Piraterie sei eine Art der Verteidigung gegen „gierige Nationen des Westens“. Es sei keine klassische Seeräuberei, sondern Selbstverteidigung. „Es ist eine Verteidigung des Essens der somalischen Kinder.“
Die Piraten erpressen Millionenlösegelder für gekaperte Schiffe. Am Donnerstag war nach vier Monaten ein mit 31 Kampfpanzern beladener ukrainischer Frachter gegen eine 2,5 Millionen Euro freigegeben worden. Derzeit haben somalische Piraten etwa ein Dutzend Schiffe in ihrer Gewalt.
Quelle: http://www.abendblatt.de/daten/2009/02/06/1038988.html
»In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
AntwortenLöschenYes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."
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 Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.«
-- Johann Hari: You Are Being Lied to About Pirates. The Huffington Post, 13. April 2009. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/you-are-being-lied-to-abo_b_155147.html