Even in New Zealand the trial is talked about. The
following are comments on a public meeting held there recently.
Observations
of a farcical trial in Hamburg, where the might of Germany and its
plodding jurisprudence was set the challenge of annihilating a
handful of Somali pirates.
The underlying theme of
the evening comes as a paraphrasing of what Slavoj Zizek said in a
public discussion with Assange: “let’s not be glib. You are a
terrorist, technically, yes this is true. But, and this is my point:
if you are a terrorist, then my god, what are they?!”
Lets unpack that: the
Somali men and youths sentenced to between seven and two years in
jail are pirates. The beginning of this modern piracy of the Horn of
Africa started as a way to claim some payment from international
fishing ships plundering the region. But the pirates have become more
sophisticated and have moved outside of the zone that once would have
been called Somalia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (SEEZ). Apparently a
country loses this zone when they no longer have a functioning
government. And into these empty oceans came the plunderers of marine
life and the dumpers of chemicals and waste too costly to dump
elsewhere. There are documented cases of this reported in the UN.
What are these companies compared to the Somali pirates? What are
they compared to the Somalis being tried under terrorism laws right
now in Italy? We’re going to need a bigger word, a more villainous
noun.
The evening was full of
brilliant contrasts. Compare the Somali man who was blackmailed by a
debt to a petty merchant and who ended up in Hamburg with the might
of the Nato fleets patrolling the waters off the cape. Compare the
relatively functioning democratic territory of Somaliland,
unrecognised in international law, with the embattled state of
Somalia, barely controlling Mogadishu but ceaselessly favoured by the
international community. Compare the Somali youths in limbo now that
they have served their two years, but have no passport to get home,
there are no direct flights (and no other countries to allow them on
flights) and the liberal sentiments in Germany that mean no-one can
be deported to a country involved in a civil war with the carefree
parting of the waters as ships cruise past the Horn of Africa towards
the Suez canal, parting the ocean with all the ease fantasised about
by the proponents of free trade.
