Right: A group of armed Somalian pirates surrenders to naval forces. International action against piracy has seen many pirates turn from attacking freighters to boarding small pleasure vessels and holding the owners for ransom. Found a word you're not familiar with? Double-click that word to bring up a dictionary reference to it. The dictionary page includes an audio sound file with which to actually hear the word said. |
Further implications
As a number of authorities have noted, there is no simple solution when dealing with the kidnapping of an Australian national in another jurisdiction. The perpetrators of the crime are likely to be difficult to deal with. Further, there is general agreement that for a government to pay a ransom only increases the likelihood that more Australians will be kidnapped.
Therefore most governments, including Australia's, adopt the policy of refusing to pay ransoms. This leaves them in the awkward position of attempting to negotiate a kidnap victim's release, while not giving the kidnappers what they want.
Given the difficulty of the situation it is surprising that only three Australian kidnap victims are known to have been killed by their captors since 1994. Despite this, a range of criticisms have been made of the manner in which the Australian government conducts these negotiations.
Chief among these criticisms is that Australia does not facilitate families who wish to ransom their kidnapped family members. Australian anti-terrorist laws make it an offence to supply financial support to terrorists. These laws act as an impediment to those who wish to ransom a kidnap victim. Some claim that exceptions should be made in the case of those paying ransoms.
The 2011 Senate inquiry recommended that the Australian government put the families of kidnap victims into contact with professional kidnap negotiators. This amounts to the tacit endorsement of privately paid ransoms. The difficulty with this as an official government policy is that, irrespective of whether private or government funds are used to pay a ransom, the more often a ransom is paid the more likely it is someone else will be taken hostage.
All governments are left in the dreadful situation of balancing the wellbeing of a current kidnap victim against the need to protect all potential victims.