Eritrean's Hostage in Egypt

The article I'm blogging about I found on BBCNews. The article says that about 250 African Migrants are being held hostage by people smugglers in Egypt. According to the article, many of the group were from Eritrea and were kidnapped when illegally crossing the Israel border. It is reported that some of the hostages have been held for 6 or more months in shipping containers in the desert because their ransoms aren't being paid. They say that this people smuggling and kidnapping happens quite often and Israel is even trying to build a border in the desert to try to deter it from happening. The ransoms have gone up. What started as wanting $2,000 has now gone to between $8,000 and $15,000. The article says that there are efforts underway to get the hostages back safe.

This article caught my attention because it was talking about hostages and people-smuggling. While I'm not entirely sure what that involves, it didn't sound good. To me, the ransoms seem ridiculous to ask of people and their loved one who were illegally crossing borders. What I infer from that is that they don't have much money, that's what happens in the United States, Mexicans cross our borders in search of money and jobs so I'm assuming that's what these African migrants were doing as well. It's also just really...wrong? That people kidnap each other for money and smuggle them for money as well. I try not to think that Africa is a bad place, but sometimes these articles make that hard.

Pirates in the Indian Ocean

The article I'm blogging about I found here in the Daily Nation. The article is discussing piracy in Africa. Somalia seems to be where most of these problem pirates are coming from. The article says that alot of places have had to increase shipping charges on freights because ships are having to take longer routes to avoid Somali pirates. According to the article, a ship from Mumbai in India used to take twelve days at sea and it now takes eighteen days because they've had to change their route further South by Madagascar. And ships from Dubai to Mombasa used to take six days and now take twelve to avoid Somalia. Also according to the article, pirates have attacked sixteen ships and successfully hijacked five of them in East African waters in just a month, three in the last three weeks.

I chose to blog about this topic because it is one that can be and has been brought up in American news, which isn't often the case with other topics I've chosen. Somali pirates I've really noticed stories about in the news and such in the last year or two, but that's just me noticing so I'm not sure the real timeline. The article isn't a real long one but from it, it leaves me questioning why Somalia doesn't have better regulations on boats and letting them out into the sea. Also, why doesn't the Somalian government have more patrol boats and government type boats out in the sea to stop this from happening so often? I'm not for sure, but I think the U.S. has a lot patroling type stuff and the Coast Guard and whatnot. It's really a shame that these pirates have caused higher shipping charges and besides that, extra fuel to make the trips. I really think that we should be moving into a "green" era and pirates are definately preventing that when they make ships travel further.

According to this youtube clip about Somali Pirates, they say that the government is somewhat involved, even taking percentages of ransoms. It's an interesting three minute clip.