By Ilana Turko
In recent times we have witnessed an enormous increase in pirate attacks, especially off the coast of Somalia. After one of the most recent attacks, where Captain Richard Phillips risked his life by volunteering to be held captive in an effort to protect the crew of the Maersk Alabama, President Obama approved of the use of military snipers in an attempt to rescue the captain.
International military response to these terrifying pirate attacks has varied. In our Human Rights, the Holocaust, and the Law class, we often discuss the fixation of the law on the tangible, such as physical damages or money lost, and contrast this with the lack of focus on spiritual and moral harms. In response to the captivity of Captain Phillips by Somali pirates, the US military was given public approval to intervene. This can be viewed as a reflection of our legal and moral disapproval of the acts of the Somali pirates. However, the Royal Navy was recently warned by the British Foreign Office that they should not intervene or detain Somali pirates because those pirates may be able to make asylum claims in Britain. Why? Because the pirates, if convicted in their native country of Somalia, could be subject to human rights violations such as beheading or having their hands chopped off.
This scenario presents an interesting example of how the concept of moral/spiritual harm can be so easily divorced from legal “justice.” Although the British authorities may theoretically recognize that the terror that the pirates impose on their victims is very real and horrifying, they render their military officials impotent because of a legal technicality (an important legal technicality in the realm of human rights, but a technicality nonetheless). Their military personnel – those who are actually in a position to intervene and put an end to the appalling spiritual and legal injustice that the victims of pirate attacks suffer – are unable to act in a way that fully recognizes the range of suffering to which the victims are subject. The British government says the military mustn’t detain the culprits. Although there is a legal reason for disallowing their military personnel from getting involved at this level, the lack of intervention is tantamount to a tacit approval of the moral and spiritual harm that the pirates impose on their victims. This disparity in results – between a legal technicality and government condemnation of moral/spiritual harm – is a perfect example of the injustice that manifests when a legal system is presented with a legally correct result that conflicts with a morally correct result.
