By Miren Gutierrez
ROME, Nov 30 2004 (IPS)

They are 1.2 million people, about the population of Estonia. These sailors handle 80 percent of world trade – the fuel we burn, the food we eat. And increasingly, they are treated like criminals.

“Ask around and you’ll be told about the effects of the security regimes introduced (by the United States) after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001,” David Cockroft, general secretary of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) told IPS in an e-mailed interview.

>From the deportation of a seafarer for walking to a phone booth to the denial of shore leave and the posting of armed guards on gangways, Cockroft says he is getting reports of an excess of security-driven zeal in the United States.

U.S. security concerns are “understandable” but treating seafarers “with, at best, suspicion” is not the way to protect the country against terrorism or prevent it at sea, he said..

There have been other problems at sea. On 10 to 15 percent of vessels many workers face poor safety conditions, excessive hours, unpaid wages, starvation diets, rapes, and beatings, according to the widely quoted report ‘Ships, Slaves and Competition’ produced in 2001. But Cockroft says “the criminalisation of seafarers is probably the biggest issue we face at the moment.”

Ships around the world blew sirens and whistles on World Maritime Day Sep. 30 to “raise the alarm” over the new trend.

Pakistan, Indonesia and the Philippines account for 72 percent of sailors worldwide, “particularly in the supply of ratings (enlisted personnel),” Cockroft says. The 30 developed countries within the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) account for most of the rest.

Pakistan has a population of 160 million, about 97 percent of them Muslims, Indonesia is home to 238 million people, around 210 million of them Muslims. The OECD group includes Turkey with a population of about 70 million, 98 percent of them Muslim.

There were 404,000 officers and 823,000 ratings at the last industry estimate in 2000.

Now Pakistani trade unions, for example, complain that jobs are shrinking for their members because they are seen as security risks.

Scandinavian parcels tanker operator Jo Tankers is replacing the Indonesian crew members it had used for years with Filipino crew members because it believed that “to continue to use Muslim seafarers would attract delays and costly enhanced security oversight,” Cockroft said.

Jo Tankers said it would lay off more than 100 Indonesian workers “because of new U.S. security rules on seafarers,” according to an article published by ‘American Shipper’ in August last year.

“We regret that the increased security regulations, particularly in the USA, have had very negative effects on our crew changes and crew planning,” a Jo Tankers spokesman was quoted as saying. He said vessels entering U.S. ports with Indonesian seafarers on board have been subject to “increased investigations, armed port security guards…prohibited shore leave and…difficulties in visa applications.”

The reason behind these measures is the “al-Qaeda fleet”.

The Washington Post published an article in December 2002 quoting an official as saying that 15 cargo freighters were controlled by al-Qaeda “or could be used by the terrorist network to ferry operatives, bombs, money or commodities over the high seas.”

It was reported also that explosives used in the East African embassy bombings in 1998 had been delivered by an al-Qaeda-linked freighter.

According to the information offered, the U.S. intelligence system could track some of the suspect ships by satellite or surveillance planes, and with the help of allied navies. But occasionally they lost the trail of the vessels, which are frequently given new names, repainted or re-registered under shell companies and fake owners.

Ship ownership today is virtually impenetrable if the owner wishes to remain anonymous, ITF says.

“Whether the ‘al-Qaeda fleet’ continues to exist or whether it ever did is a matter of conjecture…certainly the search for those vessels involved some vigorous inspections that turned up some suspicious vessels and cast useful light onto the kind of shady practices that too often escape detection at sea,” Cockroft said.

A foe common to security and sailors’ rights is the controversial ‘flags of convenience’ (FOC) system, he said. These are flags carried by ships registered in places like Panama, St. Vincent and the Grenadines or Liberia to avoid rigorous checks on crews and cargoes.

Convenience has led to the registration of 42 percent of Japanese vessels under the Panama registry. More than 9,000 ships of more than 500 gross tons are registered there.

The registry in Tonga, a group of tiny islands in the south Pacific announced that it would close its ship registry after eight Pakistanis jumped ship in Trieste, Italy, in 2002 from a Tonga-registered boat run by a company called Nova. They misleadingly claimed to be crew, and were found to carry fake documents. U.S. officials linked them with al-Qaeda. A similar incident occurred in August last year aboard another Nova-owned ship.

Since the incidents with the Tonga-registered boats there has been a series of boardings of both Tongan and Comoros Islands’ ships in the Mediterranean. Several naval forces are monitoring and inspecting vessels in the Mediterranean, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea and the Arabian Sea.

“Tongan and Comoros flagged vessels, along with those of other flag states who have registered the ships of criminals and fraudsters, continue to attract vigilance around the world – not just from naval patrols but also from port state control authorities whose job it is to take ‘coffin ships’ off the oceans,” Cockroft said.

Lack of compliance with international standards on many boats flying a FOC has been the bête noire of ITF for years.

“Seafarers who are employed on FOC ships are often denied their basic human and trade union rights since FOC registers do not enforce minimum social standards,” ITF says. “This is what makes the flag so attractive to ship-owners. The home countries of the crew can do little to protect them because the rules that apply on board are often those of the country of registration.”

ITF has warned of irregular labour practices in more than 20 registries. A total of 28 countries provide FOCs, ITF says.

“We support sensible security measures and the involvement of seafarers in developing and participating in these,” Cockroft said. “Our particular aims are also to see the ratification of ILO Convention 185 (which establishes a universal identity card for seafarers) and the removal of the recent and onerous shore leave restrictions introduced in the U.S.”

Excerpt: