Collateral damage
Posted on | February 21, 2012 | No Comments
It is a tragedy, of course it is. A pair of Indian fishermen working aboard their little craft did not deserve to be shot dead by armed security guards on an Italian tanker. Assuming that they were indeed fishermen and doing exactly what fishermen are supposed to do, it is sad and wrong that their expedition to sea ended so tragically.There will be a lot of sympathy for them.
But there is an awful inevitability about the case and even though the word “accident” is scarcely recognised, this surely must be its proper definition, despite the angry words from Indian politicians seeking murder convictions of all and sundry.
It is worth reminding ourselves of one of the first actions in which the Indian Navy was involved a couple of years ago when the innocent crew of a pirate “mothership” met the same fate as the pirates who had taken their craft and were intent on violent attacks on innocent merchant ships. That was a regrettable accident too.
The two poor Indian fishermen are as much victims of the reign of piracy being inflicted on the Indian Ocean as any of those who have been killed, tortured or held in horrible conditions by the pirates. It is the pirates who are to blame for their demise, albeit indirectly, and who need to be prosecuted ever more robustly by governments who are seeking to protect their shipping and seafarers. What will be horribly wrong is to indulge in all sorts of breast beating about this accident (which it is worth noting involved a naval party rather than any private enterprise) and encouraging those who see arms aboard merchant ships as morally wrong.
This is an undeclared war, in which the armed forces involved have been behaving with extraordinary restraint. Accidents happen in peacetime, but are much more understandable in what has become a “war zone”; one in which the pirates have been the only aggressors. Let’s remember that, as we offer sympathy to the relatives of the latest victims.
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