Piracy

Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich]

My Lords, I should like to echo the gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Luce, for introducing this debate at this time. It has been heartening to hear about the reduction in the rates of piracy and also what needs to be done to establish the long-term solution to this awful modern scourge. However, I feel it incumbent on me to remind the House again of the human cost to the crews of those ships.

We are very well aware of that from that excellent organisation, the Mission to Seafarers, which works very hard to care for those who have been released from captivity. We can certainly be very glad that the number of people who are now being held captive has been reduced. Nevertheless, if the report by the Oceans Beyond Piracy group, The Human Cost of Piracy 2011, is anything to go by, one of the very disturbing aspects is that, while there might be fewer people being held hostage, the violence towards them is getting worse. There are very serious reports of people being horribly mistreated, such as being put in the freezers of the ships for 40 minutes or left out in the blazing sun without clothes, among other things. That is extremely disturbing, and not surprisingly leaves people horribly traumatised afterwards.

The Mission to Seafarers, a Christian maritime charity, is working with seafarers in this high-risk area and has chaplains at Dar es Salaam, Mombasa, Aqaba, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Chaplains are trained in post-trauma stress counselling to help seafarers adjust when they come back. Very often, Mombasa is the port where newly released ships arrive. The welfare facilities there, with that network of chaplaincies, are able to reconnect people with their homes and families and provide counselling and debriefing.

I should like to put some flesh on this. The vessel “Asphalt Venture” was taken two years ago on a journey from Mombasa to Durban. Fifteen crewmen were initially on board when negotiations began. Six months after being taken, the ship was released after ransom was paid, along with eight seafarers. The remaining seven were taken on land into Somalia and they are still in captivity. One of them is a 27 year-old Indian seafarer called Daniston Lytton. There has been little or no movement in freeing the remaining crew, who now have now been held hostage for over two years. His family is desperate to know what more can be done. The Mission to Seafarers in south India has been providing pastoral assistance and counselling some of the families associated with the ship. The chaplain has regularly written to the Indian Government and liaised with the ship owners and agents in the hope of finding a satisfactory conclusion to this case, but nothing has come of it. The national media in India are beginning to ask whether the Indian Government have forgotten about the nationals being held hostage and there is speculation that two of them might even have died since, though there has been no confirmation of that. That is the reality of what being a hostage taken by pirates is about.

Most of the seafarers come from major labour supply countries such as India, the Philippines and others. In the light of what the Mission to Seafarers is offering at the moment in terms of counselling and help to release seafarers and help to their families, I wonder whether the Minister would be willing to meet representatives of the mission to ensure that suitable support is available in the event that British hostages—I hope this never happens—are taken. There needs to be joined-up thinking about this. As we have already heard, so many of these seafarers come from Commonwealth countries, so can the Minister indicate what assistance Her Majesty’s Government might be able to offer to other nations, particularly those within the Commonwealth, which are working to secure the release of their nationals?

I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for introducing this human cost, which, of course, will be solved entirely if the measures outlined solve the international situation. An urgent human problem continues and anything that we can do from this Chamber to support those who treat and care for people in that situation, and who can do more for those who are still being held hostage, must be welcomed.