Recent news reports have revealed that there are many Filipinos caught up in ship piracy in the Indian Ocean. A Captain of a ship registered in Liberia and crewed entirely by Filipinos was kept in captivity by Somali pirates for four months this year while his wife and newly born child waited in earnest back in the Philippines.

The ship had been hijacked by Somali pirates as it entered the Gulf of Aden, even though the ship is substantial in size there was no way it could overpower the Somali speedboat which was heavily armed.

This particular captain and his crew are not the only Filipinos affected by piracy. As they commonly crew ships for big companies, they inevitably form parts of the crew.

Statistics reveal that since 2006, almost 750 Filipinos, working on more than 60 freighters, have been captured in this way.

Tug boat taking out the ship from the harbor © Grecaud Paul Fotolia.com

Filipinos are not being particularly singled out by the pirates; it is just that so many people from the Philippines work in the maritime industry.

Capt Caniete’s torment started on a tranquil clear day in the middle of December. He first spotted the pirate boat when it was a long way off from his own ship, and stared with fear as it gathered speed and became close.

“I was extremely nervous and my total body was trembling,” he recollects. “They were continually shooting at the ship. They got on the radio and said Captain, you have not stopped so you will be killed.”

After more than five hours of a cat and mouse pursuit, the pirates then hauled themselves up onto the ship, and holding up their AK-47’s they soon overcame the captain and crew, making them take the ship to the coast of Somalia.

The Filipinos on the vessel were held on board, with hardly any food, while dialogue was underway.

Capt Caniete was forced to make a phone call to his company to inform them that he would be shot if a ransom was not paid.

He was severely beaten by the pirates as they were suspicious that a coffee pot he had brought along with him onto the ship was really a satellite telephone. But it was a present from his wife that he cherished.

In the end and after four months, the pirates departed without a word. And Capt Caniete assumed a solution had been found enabling their release.

With this increase in involvement of Filipinos as pirate fodder, The Philippines does not have the money for extra security for their crews but they are conducting anti piracy exercises. Every Filipino seafarer goes through compulsory anti-piracy lessons before they go out to sea.

Several hundred Filipinos have been held by Somali pirates in recent years and in spite of the increasing danger of piracy, there never seems to be any lack in the number of Filipinos wishing to enlist in a crewing job in the maritime trade.

The wages paid out by the shipping corporations offer a favourable quality of living, and offer one of a small number of paths out of poverty for numerous Filipino families. In the last year, Filipino seagoing workers were able to send nearly two and a half billion pounds back to their homes which make up a crucial component of the country’s economy.