Paying ransoms is wrong
Posted on November 11, 2010Today must have a glorious flavour for the Chandlers, the British couple newly freed by Somalian pirates. By all accounts, their time in captivity has been horrendous. We should all be delighted they are free.
All that cannot change, though, my discomfort with the way in which their release was secured. Apparently, a ransom of over £600,000 was paid.
It can never be right to pay money to kidnappers. As well as encouraging other pirates, ransom cash is used to kidnap others in future.
Private shipping companies have already made that mistake – the initial handful of ransoms they paid have spawned an epidemic of piracy in Somalia. Now, there’s a danger that the Chandlers’ case has set a precedent that will see private individuals become viewed as a lucrative opportunity, just as tankers became a few years ago.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m quite certain that if it was my parents or friends in that hellhole I would consider doing anything to rescue them. But there should be other, cooler, wiser heads there to stop me, because my actions would harm others.
I’m genuinely pleased for the Chandlers – but there are other families out there today who may well see there nearest and dearest kidnapped using kit bought with this money. That cannot be a good thing.
You’re in a dark street and a man pulls a gun and demands your wallet and watch. Do you say to him, “I’m sorry, but it’s my policy to not pay muggers as it only encourages them”?
15.11.2010 12:42
But we’re not discussing muggers, Mr Potarto. We’re talking about kidnap – where the decision to make the transaction is done from a distance and normally under the eyes of the authorities.
15.11.2010 13:30
So when you wrote, “there should be other, cooler, wiser heads there to stop me”, you literally would support a law criminalising the family of the Chandlers?
What about if the money came from the Chandlers themselves, would it be illegal to pay your own ransom? How is this different from paying a mugger?
15.11.2010 19:23
It is not that it is illegal. Simply that the negative externality (the creation of an incentive for future kidnappers and the provision of money to criminals) outweighs the private benefit (release of the individual). Hence while the individual may be better off, society as a whole is worse off. That is why it should be discouraged.
17.11.2010 21:49
Absolutely correct. It’s been interesting in recent days listening to the moral and verbal contortions of people who rationalize away their abrogation of the principle of no payment of kidnap ransoms, ever, by saying “in this case the end justifying the means” while sanctimoniously professing their abhorrence of, and opposition to, the use of robust interrogation techniques in any circumstances on the grounds that “the end can never justify the means”.
15.11.2010 12:56
If my nearest and dearest were kidnapped, i would do anything to free them, including paying a ransom – if i could afford it! I fully agree, this moralising is fine until it happens to you – i certainly would not be thinking of possible future kidnappings of someone unknown to me, if paying off some savages holding my loved ones to ransom!
15.11.2010 21:30
There can be no doubt that paying a ransom will affect others in the future, and refusing to pay is the logical approach to this situation. However, as the post articulately conveys, it must be very difficult for families and friends to stand back and do nothing.
15.11.2010 22:18
If the Chandlers were armed the problem would never have arisen.
It is time this government allowed the purchase of firearms for self defence while travelling abroad.
It would save a multitude of problems.
16.11.2010 00:30
To fund something is to encourage it.
While I cannot judge a family for paying a ransom, it is unforgivable for a government.
16.11.2010 07:57
The problem is that reginal and global government are treating the piracy problem as some sort of business expense.
The Barbary Pirates in the 16-19th century were a real problem until the European nations decided to sort it out by force of arms. Then they weren’t.
16.11.2010 11:47
It shows our politically correct world when no-one is asking, and loudly, the difficult question, namely “What the hell were they doing travelling around the most notoriously Pirate-ridden waters in the world in the first place. Of course in an ideal world they should be able to do this in absolute safety but most of us live in the real world not some delusional utopia. Anyone contemplating a voyage of this nature should properly research the whole thing first. The most basic of research on these waters would have revealed the very real and constant pirate menace. Am I glad they are safe? Of course, who wouldn’t be but I would spend more time worrying about people who have been kidnapped while not knowingly putting themselves in harms way in the first place!
16.11.2010 12:27
@SteveC, I think they were actually about 600 miles from the coast of Somalia when they were captured. I would have expected that distance to be safe, no doubt they did too, so it’s unfair to blame them for their own predicament.
The real answer is for the competent powers to shoot any pirates on sight, and ask questions afterwards, if at all. Nelson would have known what to do, and so do we; why are our politicians so pathetic?
Oh, and paying ransoms is always wrong. Agreed.
18.11.2010 10:15
£600,000 would buy a lot of bullets and that would quickly reduce the numbers prepared to take part in these acts of piracy.
arm a few “Q” ships to the teeth and go sailing near somalia, then ventilate any pirates that get near and sink their boats once any intelligence is obtained from them.
21.11.2010 13:35
[...] be kidnapped as a result markwallace Posted on October 10, 2011 Tweet Almost a year ago I wrote on the difficult question of whether paying a ransom for the release of the Chandlers, the British couple kidnapped by Somali pirates, was right or wrong. It’s my view that paying [...]
18.10.2011 12:41