Blood Ransom is about the fight against piracy committed by Somalians and the prominent role played by Seychelles (population 80,000) in that fight. The author was working on a proposal to be sent to National Geographic to make a film Pirates in Paradise when he came across a post on Facebook by his friend, Ronny Jumeau, Permanent Representative of Seychelles to the United Nations, showing what his country was doing to combat piracy. Boyle contacted Jumeau and soon he was on a flight to Seychelles where the government rolled out the red carpet for him.
The author begins the book with a chapter on the origins of Somali piracy. There has been no government for more than a generation in Somalia. With a civil war raging, the capital resembles Stalingrad of World War II. AK 47 rules everywhere. Fishing that traditionally provided livelihood for people is no longer possible as the huge foreign fishing boats have destroyed the breeding grounds of fish. The 2004 tsunami destroyed the coastal villages. Under these circumstances, for the young, piracy became an attractive option, perhaps the only one.
The first half of the book is rather intriguing, but the narration gets challenging in the subsequent chapters that lack structure and coherence. The book does, however, throw up some interesting facts. Sample these. The annual cost of piracy to the global economy is $18 billion. There are 700 foreign-owned vessels fishing without licence in Somalian waters. Fish worth $300 million is lost to Somalia from such unauthorised fishing. As Europe adopted more stringent regulations on the disposal of toxic waste, Somalia was chosen as a preferred location for dumping such waste. And it costs $250 per tonne to dispose such waste properly in Europe whereas it costs only $2.50 to dump it in Somalia, an indication of the huge profits involved. Ilaria Alpi, an Italian investigative journalist, who made a film on such criminal dumping activities was murdered.
The public does not know the important role Seychelles has played in fighting piracy and how it came to take up that responsibility. The author’s account is lucid. If pirates are caught, it was difficult to find a state able and willing to put them on trial. This is partly because of the inherent complications in merchant shipping. Imagine a ship “registered under a flag of convenience in Panama, owned by a consortium of Greek and Saudi shell companies, crewed by Indonesians and Filipinos under a Malaysian skipper, carrying a cargo owned by a limited corporation in Dubai, en route from Venezuela to Yemen, that is rescued in the international waters by a Dutch warship. Who prosecutes and where?”
The 1988 Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation (SUA) solved the problem only partially. It permitted the master of the ship to convey suspects to another state—but only to the arresting state or to one with interest. Hardly any state is interested to take on the responsibility. UN and EU offered financial support to Kenya, but after a while a Kenyan court decided the country had no jurisdiction. Seychelles offered to be the prosecuting state and amended its own legislation.
An index would have added to the value of this well-researched book.