Yemeni fishermen at risk from piracy [Archives:2006/929/Local News]

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March 16 2006

By: Amel Al-Ariqi
SANA'A, March 14 ) According to the Ministry of Defense's 26 September web site, Yemen's Coast Guard continues searching for a boat (Alzhra) carrying 12 Yemeni fishermen who disappeared two weeks ago. There has been no contact with the boat since March 3 when it was 158 miles from Abdul Kori Island, part of Socotra, a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the Horn of Africa.

Ali Ahmed Al-Shiba, director of the Union of Fishing Cooperation, said, “These fishermen's lives are at risk due to food and water shortage.”

Yemen's navy has intensified its security measures to protect Yemeni fishermen from potential piracy in the Socotra islands. According to the web site, measures were intensified after Somali pirates kidnapped Yemeni fishing boats and their fishermen on a fishing journey in Yemeni territorial waters near Abdul Kori Island.

“Our Coast Guard and marine forces are on the alert to take necessary action against such piracy,” Foreign and Migrant Affairs Minister Abubakr Al-Qirbi said in a news report.

IRIN news service quoted Al-Qirbi as saying that continued piracy in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea is threatening Yemen's fishing industry. “Sea piracy is threatening the stability of the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea,” he said.

He also said pirates represent a threat to both tourist cruises and international shipping in the region. “Our problem is the threat they pose to our fishermen as well and their role in trafficking people, drugs and weapons,” he added.

Yemen's Saba state news agency recently quoted a Yemeni official as saying that Somali pirates abducted 50 fishermen from four boats off Yemen's Abdul-Kori Island on Monday, March 6.

In a statement to Saba, Salim Awadh Misdad, head of Socotra's Fisheries Ministry office, said a source in the Abdul Kori fishery cooperative informed him by telephone that the fishermen were abducted off the island while fishing.

The 26 September web site said 20 fishing boats out of 83 seized by Somali pirates in recent weeks have been freed. But Al-Qirbi said that as some fishermen are released, others are kidnapped.

“Although none of the fishermen were harmed, pirates confiscated their property, including their boats,” Al-Qirbi added.

He referred to the fact that Yemen's government already has brought up the matter with Somalia's interim government and influential groups in autonomous regions of the war-torn country, such as Puntland and the self-declared Republic of Somaliland.

Yemen's government requested the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) intervene to secure the abducted fishermen's release.

“We received an official request from the Yemeni Foreign Ministry to follow the fishermen's case,” confirmed Martin Amacher, head of the ICRC delegation to Yemen in Sana'a. “As we aren't in a position to do that from here, our colleagues in Nairobi are following up the case,” he added.

After petroleum, the fishing sector is the biggest source of foreign currency, contributing about $210 million to the Yemeni economy in 2004. The industry is also a major source of employment for the country's poor, especially those inhabiting coastal areas.

According to 2004 Ministry of Fisheries statistics, the fishing sector provided 316,000 job opportunities; 65,000 job opportunities for fishermen and 250,000 for those working in marketing and other fishing industry activities. Workers in this sector provide for 1.7 million people, that is 8.6 percent of Yemen's population.
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