Kelvin
Everybody is entitled to his/het own thinking and feeling about it.
seemingly you think that when pirates hijacking ships, whith rocket propelled guns and AK47,s we should applaud. You even don,t give the sailors the right to shoot back on sight.
Name me one reason why a group of men which boards a vessel at high seas with guns and willing to kill sailors in the way of doing so to hijack/steal/kidnap/murder) , has any right to be treated fairly in european courts or for that matter in any court in this world.
In other words you propose,,sailors,,lay back,, we navies and strong europeans coming to your rescue after we talked with the pirates for a few month ?
By the way, I am born and raised in Germany. It suprises me aigain and again when europeans bashing the americans,,but when there is an emergency again,,, Please,, America help.
You might want to go back into history and look back,,who bailed out the europeans again and again. not the russians/chinese or any other nation
Blaming the shipping companies in this matter is also not a square deal. Everything is nowadays regulated through governments and in the shipping industry a lot via IMO.
Even if I would conjure with you on that,,that still leaves the sailors out of the deal.
There are 100,s of committee,s for all occasions,,the only one who is never represented by themself are the sailors. It starts already, if a ship carries guns, in order to be able to protect themselves,every country has different rules and regulations on that subject to the point like South Africa, if a Master does not declare weapons a/b 30 days in advance, he runs risk to be imprisoned on arrival.
I stand in that matter by what I said,,if someone with the guns first boards my ship, and I have the chance to shoot them,, I would do so with no hesitation whatsoever. The same way as I would be shot by them if they think it is needed.
brgds
ted