Recently, Qingyuan's "De Xin Hai" was hijacked by pirates. As an ocean-going crew member, I am very worried about the seafarers who are being hijacked. Because in November 2008, I also experienced the horror of the Gulf of Aden for three days - at that time there was no our own naval escort there, there are only a few warships of the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia and the European Union.
However, the news reports from the very beginning of the incident left me with an inexplicable feeling. A reporter from Xinhua News Agency interviewed the head of the EU naval force by phone and said there were more than 160 people on board the hijacked ship, including 25 Chinese crew members. I was dumbfounded when I read this, more than 160 people? For an ocean-going "cargo ship" is simply impossible! Later, after I carefully analyzed, only to find the clues, it turned out that this is the Xinhua News Agency reporter "phone" interview. It dawned on me that the major mistake of "more than 160 people" should be attributed to the reporter's lack of English listening skills. I am not here to nitpick, and then because of this error report, attracted countless netizens ridicule, they ridicule not the reporter's ignorance, but those who are still hanging on by a thread of the seafarers - "more than 160 people were hijacked by the four pirates, really a disgrace to the Chinese people! " I don't know whether to blame the netizen or the reporter when I see such comments
Today is the third day since the hijacking of the Xindehai. As an ocean-going seafarer, I have been paying attention to the latest development of the incident every day, and at the same time, I have also paid close attention to the comments of netizens on this matter. I would like to say that judging from the majority of the netizens' comments, everyone is still full of concern for these 25 compatriots, however, there are still many netizens who have said things that make me feel both ridiculous and angry. I didn't want to say anything about these comments, but every time I think of those three horrible days, and then I think of the reckless comments of those "ignorant" "cynics", I feel that there are some things I have to say.
First of all, someone brought up the matter of "Zhenhua 4". Why was it that the crew of the "Dexinhai" couldn't do the same when others were able to put up a fight? First, the routes were different. Zhenhua 4 route is to cross the Gulf of Aden, that is a place densely populated by pirates, when we go there every day when the day breaks, the high frequency will continue to encounter pirates asking for assistance in the freighter's call for help, while the radar is also constantly appearing on the intention of mischief point of light, almost non-stop around the pirate speedboats to harassment in the face of the pirates in such a dense area of the Zhenhua 4 from the start to do a lot of anti-piracy work, such as their departure port from the Tetsuya, a large number of anti-piracy work, for example, from the port of departure to the "German New Sea" on board. Work, for example, they from the port of departure deliberately on the gasoline homemade flasks, the main deck to the living area of the ladder cut off in advance to prevent the boarding of the pirates rushed into the living area ...... These measures proved to be successful in resisting the pirates hijacking. Looking back at the Dexinhai, their route was from South Africa to India and the hijacking took place 980 nautical miles away from Mogadishu, Somalia.
Maybe a lot of people do not understand the concept of 980 nautical miles, my specialty is navigation, to give you a nautical commonly used conversion formula: 1 nautical mile is equivalent to 1852 meters, that is, 1,814.96 kilometers, I think so we should have a general concept, right? Therefore, Dexinhai's crew in such a normal view is a safe area of the sea area to relax vigilance is more than normal things, as the saying goes, who can guarantee that there will not be negligence? Moreover, from the range of pirate activities in the last two years, there have been no pirates in that location at all, so we can't just blame our crew for their low safety awareness and carelessness when an accident occurs, isn't this typical hindsight? If Dexinhai's crew is negligent in this case is a fault, then our seafarers anti-piracy range should be extended where? What should be the scope of this anti-piracy defense?
Those who don't work as seafarers may not understand the profession of seafarers, thinking that seafarers have nothing to do on the sea every day, and that only the seafarers themselves and their families can understand the real working conditions on the ship. Imagine such a large ship, the whole by the steel composition, sailing in the ocean all year round, rust corrosion situation how serious? Our ocean-going vessels can be used for more than 30 years. Imagine if there were no groups of seafarers working on board to maintain the ship every day, could such a large ship be used for such a long time? Seafarers do not have leisure time on board, this work is not like land, working 8 hours a day (of course, not excluding many people will work overtime), every weekend and double holidays, seafarers from the day they work on board the ship to say goodbye to double holidays, say goodbye to 8 hours a day, the normal working hours, and for most of the seagoing crews this dry half a year to a year of time. So it is simply unrealistic to expect them to be on their toes at all times to defend themselves against piracy in otherwise safe waters 980 nautical miles away from Mogadishu. This negligence on their part should be completely understandable.
Secondly, the ship's structure is different. From the photos released by the media, the construction of Zhenhua 4 provided good conditions for them to be able to successfully push back, because the main deck and the living area deck from Zhenhua 4 are not connected, and the living area deck is several meters higher than the main deck, and it is necessary to climb to the living area deck from the main deck through a ladder, so as long as they cut down and put away the ladder ahead of time, there is no more access from the main deck to the living area deck, and the pirates can only themselves to build a ladder to enter the living area, which gave the brothers of Zhenhua 4 an opportunity to stop the pirates from building a ladder with water hoses and Molotov cocktails from both decks of the bridge. On the contrary, in our Dexinhai, the main deck leads all the way to the stern and is directly connected to the deck of the living quarters, so pirates can rush into the living quarters as if they were walking on the ground if they succeeded in boarding the ship. There are pictures to prove this, so you can search the internet and take a closer look to see if this is what I'm talking about ;)
Secondly, some people say "Why don't we use our own convoys when we have them now? Isn't this asking for trouble?" I can only say, please find a globe to see for yourself, our escort fleet is in the Gulf of Aden to carry out the mission, and the route of the Dushanbe is from South Africa to India, so I would like to ask the friends who mention this kind of question to look at the globe in their hands, how can they pass through the Gulf of Aden, protected by our own warships? Perhaps some careful people will say that they can go westward from South Africa, along the coast of West Africa into the Strait of Gibraltar through the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal and through the Red Sea, so that they can pass through the Gulf of Aden, which is protected by our own warships. I have nothing more to say to this argument. I have traveled the Gulf of Aden, from the west end to the east end (we are also an ocean-going bulk carrier), in a little over three days, day and night. So, please, those of you who are careful, compare for yourself the length of that route on a globe with the length of the Gulf of Aden from west to east, and by the way, do your own math on how long it takes. The daily consumption of a bulk carrier adds up to hundreds of thousands of RMB, and this is still talking about a small ship of more than 30 000 tons, so we can have a figure for that cost, right? Even if the shipowner says that for the sake of safety, we spare no expense, but the shipowner is not the only one in the shipping market! Most of the ships are still taken on by charterers. For a 30,000-ton ship produced in the 1980s, the charter rate in the international shipping market before October 2008 was "45,000 USD per day"! So, imagine if you were a charterer, would you agree to a ship choosing such a route in order to avoid pirates and to be protected by the navy? Danger is everywhere when sailing at sea, so you can't just start going around and around because of the danger, right? In that case, the global shipping market will be paralyzed, China's import and export trade from where to start?
I have also seen some of the guys who don't know the importance of the pain and itch say something like "only 4 pirates to 25 people to hijack, the crew are some sheep? ...... There was no sense of resistance at all." Seriously, I don't know what my friend who said this is doing? Is he a school kid who doesn't even know what he's doing? Or is he an employee of a company? Or are you a police officer or a member of the People's Liberation Army who lives in our peaceful family? Have you ever been targeted by an AK47? Have you ever crouched behind a bunker by a distance of only 5 meters from the AK wildly swept two piles of bullets have you ever RPG shells dragged white smoke along with an ear-splitting whistling sound from the top of the head past the experience? Who doesn't know how to beat his chest and play the hero? It's just lip service. Will you still be as defiant as you say you are when you are in a real life-and-death situation? The most ironic thing is that every day on the Internet to beat their chests to do justice to thousands of people, but the society will still appear in the murderer strutting from the crowd of onlookers to escape things, and this kind of thing has long been commonplace! Why are so many "good men" in the Internet, but "bears" in reality? "Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is not the old adage for you "network good guy" to listen to? On land we have 110, there are millions of people, even if we fight with criminals injured there are 120 hospitals and doctors, but the sea crew have what? All they have is fear and despair!
Imagine if 25 unarmed crew and have AK47 and RPG heavy weapons pirates fighting, even if the pirates successfully forced back, there will certainly be people injured or life-threatening, to that time others should do? Call 110 or 120?Who do they look for to rescue their fellow passengers? The result is that they can only watch their brothers who are in the same boat*** die in pain. I guess by that time there will be people on the Internet will not hurt to say that these crew members head one tendon only die fighting hard do not know and the pirates around it! Each of us seafarers are living people with parents, wives and children, and behind each one of them is a family of their own, just like those of you who only make painless comments on the Internet! Who are you to ask others to sacrifice their lives for righteousness? Who are you to ask people to die for the glory of our country?
Lastly, there are people who say that "pirates will only pick up soft pinches," "Why only see the pirates robbed our Chinese ship," "If the Americans would be good, you can give pirates a lesson! "clouds. Please brothers, do not so well bottom of the frog line?08 a year Somali pirates total **** hijacked nearly one hundred cargo ships (specific figures I do not remember clearly, just the impression of the International Counter-Piracy Center reported the number is close to 100), of which we Chinese ships were hijacked by the number is zero! I have personally experienced the Gulf of Aden, I have seen is that the pirates simply do not distinguish what soft persimmons are not soft persimmons, they are to see the ship to touch, regardless of which country's flag you are hanging, they simply do not care. Why have so many of our compatriots ever been hijacked? Because the number of seafarers in some developed countries such as Europe and the United States is almost zero compared to the number of our seafarers! Now the world's seafarer output is all from developing countries, so even if the pirates want to hijack a few more Americans, they can't do anything about it because there aren't many Americans who would work as seafarers and go to Somali territory! Besides the Americans, those of you who think that the United States is very good buddy is uneducated or how I do not know, I know is that in 1993 the Americans in Mogadishu, that is, the Somali capital suffered a big loss, two Blackhawk helicopters were shot down by the Somalis not to mention that the body of a special operations soldier was also Somalis with a rope dragged through the streets for public demonstration. When this picture was broadcast in the United States when Clinton tears, and then soon Clinton announced a single party Ming withdrawal from Somalia, and painfully said that the United States will never meddle in African affairs. Seeing this, I wonder what those little brothers who think Americans are good at what they think? I am now more and more confused? We Chinese have been independent for 60 years, how can so many people still be so presumptuous?
It's just that the last two days I've seen a number of "idiots" on the Internet that I can't stand, and they've been making some smart comments. Each of us engaged in different occupations, different experience, different knowledge, so there are many things we do not understand, when you do not understand some of the issues can ask, you can ask questions, but please do not think that a very knowledgeable look spittle flying published their own make a fool of themselves "insights". In the face of 25 hijacked our compatriots, their lives are still hanging by a thread, before they are safely rescued, we should not judge them prematurely, not to mention like some animals on the Internet to watch their own compatriots' lives are threatened also issued a disgusting sneer mocking voice. The Somali pirates do not kill people, we can check, in 2007 because the owner of the ship did not pay the ransom on time, they once brutally killed one of our Liaoning compatriots.
Lastly, may these 25 compatriots of our Chinese nation, may these 25 brothers of my crew be rescued soon, and return home to their families in peace