The United States went to war to stop Iran charging tolls in the Strait of Hormuz. It has now imposed a toll 15 times larger. Where is the “international waterway” chorus now?

For five months, we were treated to a sermon. Foreign ministries from Brussels to Tokyo to the Gulf capitals lined up to recite the catechism: the Strait of Hormuz is an international waterway. Freedom of navigation is sacrosanct.

No state may impose charges on innocent transit. Iran’s proposal to levy a passage fee was denounced as extortion, as hostage-taking of the global economy, as a violation of the law of the sea so grave that it justified war.

• READ MORE: US carrying out new attacks on Iran after Trump’s threats
• Other Lim Tean articles

On Monday, the President of the United States announced that America will henceforth be known as “THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT” — and that as guardian, it will be reimbursed at the rate of 20 percent of the value of all cargo passing through the waterway. Effective immediately.

Let us do the arithmetic the hymn-singers will not do. Iran was reportedly seeking something in the region of US$2 million per vessel — a figure the United States declared intolerable, a casus belli. A 20 percent ad valorem charge on a laden VLCC carrying two million barrels of crude at today’s prices approaches US$30 million per transit.

BREAKING: The UAE says two national tankers were hit by Iranian cruise missiles in the Strait of Hormuz, killing one crew member and injuring eight others. Authorities say the fires have been contained. pic.twitter.com/xfMDH2EHgn

— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) July 13, 2026

The United States bombed Iran over a toll, and has replaced it with a toll 15 times greater — collected not by the coastal state whose territorial sea the shipping lanes actually pass through, but by a power projecting force from half a world away.

There is a word for demanding a percentage of cargo value from merchant vessels under threat of naval interdiction. The word is not “guardianship.” Every shipping lawyer knows the word. Every P&I club knows the word. The Barbary corsairs knew the word, and they at least had the honesty to use it.

The law they invoked now condemns them
I have spent more than three decades in shipping law, and I want readers to understand precisely what has been done to the legal order these governments claimed to defend.

Article 38 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) guarantees the right of transit passage through straits used for international navigation. That right is absolute in a way few rights in international law are: it cannot be suspended, and it cannot be conditioned on payment — not to the coastal state, and certainly not to a third power that has appointed itself gatekeeper.

Article 42 permits bordering states to regulate certain matters, but expressly forbids any regulation that has the practical effect of denying, hampering or impairing transit. Article 26, governing territorial seas, states the principle in terms a child could understand: no charge may be levied upon foreign ships by reason only of their passage.

When Iran floated its toll, every chancellery in the Western world could recite these provisions from memory. Legal advisers produced learned memoranda. Editorial boards thundered. Now the United States — which, let us remember, has never even ratified UNCLOS — imposes a charge an order of magnitude larger, on a strait whose shipping lanes run through Iranian and Omani territorial waters, and the chancelleries have discovered the virtue of silence.

The US military says it has begun a third night of strikes against Iran, hours ahead of a planned reinstatement of a naval blockade on Iran announced by President Donald Trump. https://t.co/UrU0tRWO2A

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 13, 2026

The historical parallel is exact, and it is damning. For four centuries, Denmark extracted the Sound Dues from every vessel passing between the North Sea and the Baltic — a percentage of cargo value, paid under the guns of Kronborg Castle. The maritime powers spent generations denouncing this as a relic of feudal extortion incompatible with the freedom of the seas, and finally abolished it by treaty in 1857.

The principal architect of that abolition — the state that refused on principle to pay tribute for passage through an international strait — was the United States of America.

And there is an older irony still. The founding myth of the American navy is the refusal to pay the Barbary states for safe passage in the Mediterranean: millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute. Two and a quarter centuries later, America has not merely agreed to tribute. It has become the party collecting it.

The hymn sheet, revisited
So let us now address the chorus. Where are all the governments now — the ones who spent the spring singing from the hymn sheet of the “international waterway”?

You told us this was about principle. You told us that the freedom of navigation through international straits was a pillar of the rules-based order, that small trading nations above all depended upon it, that Iran’s toll was piracy dressed in the language of sovereignty.

Very well. The test of a principle is whether you will state it against your friends. Iran’s proposed charge was a rounding error compared to what Washington has just decreed. If US$2 million was piracy, what is US$30 million? If Iran holding the world economy hostage justified war, what does the “Guardian of the Hormuz Strait” holding it hostage justify — a strongly worded communiqué? An awkward pause at the next summit?

The silence answers the question. The principle was never the freedom of the seas. The principle was that the patron does not pay; the patron collects. The rules-based order, as I have argued at length in these pages, was never a body of rules at all. It was a hierarchy wearing the costume of law, and the costume has now been removed in public.

Consider what Gulf producers are being asked to accept. They cheered — some openly, some through gritted teeth — as American ordnance fell on Iran in the name of keeping the strait free.

Their reward is a levy on their own exports larger than anything Tehran ever contemplated, imposed unilaterally, with no treaty, no consent, no sunset clause, and no forum in which to contest it. They have exchanged a neighbour’s toll booth for an emperor’s tax farm, and they are expected to call it protection.

Seems like Trump just made a pitch for the Iranian toll system.

Because the Iranians were going to charge $1mn per ship, which would amount to 1-2% of the value of the cargo of an oil tanker.

But Trump is going to charge 20%! pic.twitter.com/m2lpNbxd0W

— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) July 13, 2026

What the underwriters will decide
Here is the dimension the political commentary will miss, and it is the one that will actually determine events. The Strait of Hormuz now has two rival authorities, each asserting control, each attaching conditions to passage. Iran’s Strait Authority has declared passage unfeasible until calm is restored and speaks of permits and designated corridors.

Washington declares the strait open, promises convoys, and demands its 20 percent.

For the war risk underwriter in London or Oslo, this is not a geopolitical abstraction. It is an impossible risk matrix. Compliance with one authority is defiance of the other. A master who joins an American convoy has identified his vessel with a belligerent; a master who hugs the Iranian corridor and pays Tehran invites interdiction by the self-appointed guardian.

Either course may void cover or trigger exclusions. Add a 20 percent cargo levy to war risk premia already at extraordinary levels, and the commercial mathematics of the strait collapse entirely. The blockade of Hormuz will be completed not by mines or missiles but by the quiet refusal of underwriters to write the risk — a mechanism I have described in the past, when the enforcement power of marine insurance was still treated as an exotic footnote.

The reckoning
Every empire that turned its guarantees into revenue streams discovered the same thing: protection that must be purchased is indistinguishable from the threat it purports to guard against, and clients who are billed like subjects begin, quietly, to shop for alternatives. The two corridors of the New World Order — the ones I have written about since earlier this year — just became three: Iran’s, America’s, and the growing routes that avoid both.

To the governments who sang from the hymn sheet: you were not defending the freedom of the seas. You were defending the exclusive right of your patron to price it. Now the invoice has arrived, addressed to you, at 20 percent of everything you own that floats.

How does it feel?

Lim Tean is a Singaporean lawyer, politician and commentator. He is the founder of the political party People’s Voice and a co-founder of the political alliance People’s Alliance for Reform. He also hosts Lim’s Substack.

“Whoever uses a citizen ill, indirectly offends the state, which is bound to protect this citizen; and the sovereign should avenge his wrongs, punish the aggressor, and, if possible, oblige him to make full reparation; since otherwise the citizen would not obtain the great end of the civil association, which is, safety.”

Swiss jurist Emmerich Vattel expounded this principle in his landmark The Law of Nations, 1758. It is universally accepted today that every State has an obligation to protect its nationals when they are overseas.

As Vattel explained back in the day: this is a duty arising from the bond of nationality. A leader who betrays this principle of citizenship is unworthy of high office. Such a man is New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Late in the night of April 29, a large Israeli force made up of several warships, a prison ship, aircraft, and drones attacked the Global Sumud Flotilla, a fleet of over 60 humanitarian vessels drawn from dozens of nations across the globe.

• READ MORE: Why the Global Sumud Flotilla hasn’t given up in spite of the Israeli attacks
• Gaza Freedom Flotilla Tracker
• Eyes Of Fire Rainbow Warrior educational resource

The Sumud flotilla, in international waters near the Greek island of Crete, was Gaza-bound. The plan was to open a humanitarian aid corridor to the enclave that is suffering genocide at the hands of Israel and its Western allies.

Over 20 vessels were boarded, many dozens of activists beaten, some later requiring hospitalisation. Once the crews were transferred to the prison ship, the vessels were sabotaged and abandoned in international waters.

For the next three days the Israelis beat dozens of the Sumud crew, tortured some, terrorised others with threats of murder, guns in their faces, and performed other unlawful acts including denying essential medication, forcing hostages into stress positions, forcing others to hug the Israeli flag, flooding decks to make sleep impossible, and many other sadistic acts. Several Kiwis were among those who were savagely kicked and punched in the head, back and ribs.

Like many Western governments, New Zealand leaders did absolutely nothing to condemn the attack, nor initiate action against Israel. They did not even offer material support to their citizen-victims once they had been dumped onto Crete without money, adequate clothing or phones.

Rainbow Warrior attack
Let’s be clear: according to international law, sovereignty does not end at the borders of a country. New Zealand suffered the most serious state terrorist attack on its own citizens since the French government bombed and sank Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour on 10 July 1985. This time the state was Israel. Both events bear uncanny resemblances and disturbing differences that are immensely consequential.

The similarity: a state terrorist attack on vessels on peaceful humanitarian missions.

The difference: the response to the two events by both the New Zealand governments and media of the day.

In 1985, when news that terrorists had infiltrated New Zealand and attached limpet mines to the hull of the Rainbow Warrior, blasting a hole below the waterline, killing photographer Fernando Pereira, the government, the media and the population of New Zealand went into a frenzy.

I will never forget those momentous times. Within days the culprits had been identified: they were agents of the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), the French equivalent of the CIA. Two of the large squad of French agents, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were caught. It eventually emerged that this terror plot — which the French impudently codenamed “Opération Satanique” — reached all the way to President François Mitterrand.

The story riveted and animated New Zealand for months. The government relentlessly pursued the villains, eventually forcing the resignation of high officials including defence minister Charles Hernu and the head of the DGSE, Pierre Lacoste. As part of the settlement the French had to pay for a replacement vessel for Greenpeace and the two spies were sentenced to 10 years prison, part of which were spent in New Zealand jails before they were transferred to internment on Hao Atoll. Within two years the French welched on the terms and let their agents return to France for awards and promotions.

Eugene Doyle comments on the flotilla outrage on Neutrality Studies.

The consequences for New Zealand were enormous. New Zealanders were shocked when they learnt Australia helped some of the attackers to escape, and the country’s other closest allies, the UK and USA, uttered not a single word of condemnation to the French. This betrayal and the terror attack itself fundamentally altered New Zealand’s relationship with its Western allies and set it on a path towards an independent foreign policy, the high-points of which was the Nuclear Free Zone Act 1987 and New Zealand’s expulsion from the ANZUS security pact with the US and Australia, both within two years of the attack. It was a time when many felt proud to be New Zealanders.

Shame of reporters
Fast forward 41 years and we have the most serious state terror attack on New Zealand since the Rainbow Warrior bombing. The media, to the shame of reporters I have spoken to off the record, treated it as a minor story and quickly moved on. The government told the victims of this terrorist attack they had to fend for themselves and offered not a breath of condemnation.

No mainstream reporter grilled the government over this inaction.

Prime Minister Luxon’s conduct is reprehensible on so many fronts. Prioritising “strategic alignment” with Israel and the US over the physical safety of New Zealanders is a betrayal of his most fundamental duty.

Even a neo-con like US President Ronald Reagan got the memo: “A government’s first duty is to protect the people,” he said in 1981. Luxon’s failure to defend his citizens — however contemptible it may be — probably does not reach the threshold of “treason” under the Crimes Act 1961 definition (lawyers may disagree) but it does confirm that the man has no place as the leader of a sovereign and democratic nation.

The Prime Minister constantly refers to himself as a “chief executive” or CEO, so I appreciate politics isn’t his strong card. Political philosophy is clearly a weakness too. So permit me, Christopher, a few observations.

Among my first lessons as a tender-faced youth attending political science classes at Victoria University was Thomes Hobbes’s principle that the only reason individuals surrender their liberty to a sovereign is for protection. If certain categories of citizens come to realise the state is willing to see them beaten and abused to please a foreign state, it breaks all sorts of bonds that should not be broken.

In other words, the litmus test for a sovereign democracy is not how the state treats docile citizens and its buddies but how it protects even vociferous dissenters when they are in the hands of a foreign power. The Sumud flotilla crew are anti-racist, anti-fascist, anti-genocide; in other words, the opposite side to the Prime Minister and the New Zealand government. They deserve protection and medals not boots in the head and abandonment.

Breaches torture convention
The mistreatment of the Sumud prisoners also breaches the Convention Against Torture (CAT) and meets the threshold for cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The Kiwis are free now and I know from speaking to some of them that they are shell-shocked and traumatised but also mindful that their ordeal was short and less than the medieval mistreatment of thousands of Palestinian hostages in Israeli concentration camps today.

As a minimum the New Zealand government should confront the Israelis and demand two things: Non-repetition and Reparations.

Non-repetition is a commitment that such wrongful acts won’t happen again. The government should issue a “Note Verbale” — a formal warning to Israel of real consequences if citizens are in any way abused. They — and all governments — should have done so before the Sumud flotilla sailed.

Secondly, the government should demand Full Reparations — payment for medical bills, evacuation costs, trauma, and damage to property, including the millions of dollars in damage to all the vessels sabotaged, and return of stolen property (including Sean Janssen’s pounamu pendant, a Māori taonga (treasure) that was ripped from his neck by an Israeli stormtrooper).

I was proud to be a New Zealander when our government stood with Greenpeace following the French state terrorist attack in 1985.

Today, I am proud of the men and women of the Global Sumud Aotearoa Delegation, including Hāhona Ormsby, Julien Blondel, Jay O’Connor, Samuel Leason, Mousa Taher, Sean Janssen and Rana Hamida. They keep alive the flame of hope that one day New Zealand will again stand for humanity, international law, peace and an independent foreign policy.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

AMY GOODMAN: Ship traffic has halted again in the Strait of Hormuz after President Trump ordered the US military to begin a naval blockade of all Iranian ports and coastal areas starting on Monday.

Iran denounced Trump’s move as an illegal act amounting to “piracy”. Iran has threatened to strike Gulf ports in retaliation.

Trump ordered the blockade after the US and Iran failed to reach a deal to end the war following 21 hours of talks in Islamabad, Pakistan.

The negotiations marked the highest-level talks between the two countries since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. US Vice-President JD Vance headed the U.S. delegation, which included US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Iranian negotiators had flown to Pakistan on a plane they called “Minab 168” as a tribute to the 168 people killed in a US missile strike on an elementary school in the city of Minab on February 28. The plane carried images of the dead schoolchildren, along with blood-stained school bags recovered beneath the rubble.

Global oil prices jumped after Trump announced the blockade.

We’re joined now by Ervand Abrahamian, professor emeritus of history at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the author of several books, most recently, Oil Crisis in Iran: From Nationalism to Coup d’État. His forthcoming book is 1979: An Inevitable Revolution.

So, your response to what transpired in Pakistan, the deal that was not reached between Iran and the United States, and what this means, Professor?

Trump orders naval blockade of Iran            Video: Democracy Now!

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, I think both sides actually presented, basically, ultimate demands which the other side couldn’t accept, so it was a false start. But the implications of the failure is going to be actually quite drastic on the United States, because Trump’s main concern has been to actually put a limit, a lid, on the oil prices going up, and they’ve already jumped from $88 a barrel to over $100. They’re going to increase more with the present crisis, with the embargo on the Strait of Hormuz.

And as the crisis escalates, I think the US will start bombing Iranian oil installations. Iran will retaliate by bombing the Gulf’s oil installations, gas installations. The oil prices then could really zoom up.

Some people expect it to reach $200 a barrel. In that case, you know, it will have long-term implications for Wall Street and the whole American economy, not to mention the world economy. So, things that Trump has tried to avoid, he has got, actually, himself into the major crisis, economic crisis.

AMY GOODMAN: You have Robert Malley, who had previously been involved with talks with Iran, saying, “Twenty-one hours was 20 hours too many if the goal was to reiterate a demand Iran had already rejected. It was many hours too few if the goal was to negotiate.” Your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: He’s exactly right. And I think, I mean, what Iran sees as the present crisis is an existential one, because although the talk has been regime change, the Israeli policy, clearly, in the last 10 years has been more than regime change. It’s basically been the destruction of the Iranian state, Iranian nation. So Iran sees this as an existential threat.

There was a speech that Trump made when he launched the attack on Iran a couple of weeks ago. It was actually quite an interesting speech. He talked about various ethnic minorities being oppressed in Iran, and they were dying to be liberated from Iranian control. And he listed obvious ethnic groups, but then there was one ethnic group that, really, I’d never heard of.

So I scratched my head. What is this group? And I did what most people do: You google. And lo and behold, this ethnic group actually exists in the other side of the Caucasus Mountains in Dagestan.

So you wonder what reason they had for putting this ethnic group that doesn’t exist in Iran as one of the ethnic groups, unless there’s some sinister idea the Israelis have of a civil war in Iran, where they will recruit, actually, mercenaries from the other side of the Caucasus to bring into Iran.

Of course, this sounds far-fetched, but this is what actually happened in Syria. You had a lot of Chechens actually brought in to fight against Assad. So, the Israelis may be thinking in those terms of actually a long civil war in Iran, where they would be bringing in mercenaries from outside. So, for this reason, I think Iran sees this as a real, serious, existential war. It’s not just a question of a minor sort of fine tuning of relations with the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve written about oil in Iran a great deal. Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, tweeted on Sunday, “Enjoy the current pump figures. With the so-called ‘blockade’, soon you’ll be nostalgic for $4-$5 [per gallon] gas.”

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yeah, yeah. I mean, the price could go up to $200 a barrel, even more than that, if, basically, the Gulf oil — it’s not just Iranian oil, but the whole Gulf oil and gas — is actually cut off from the world market.

AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about what Iran wants right now and what the US wants. Ten o’clock am — we’re broadcasting right before that — Eastern time is when the US Navy blockades, apparently, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

What exactly does this mean? How will the Gulf nations be affected? How will Iran be affected? Because it both exports oil, but, of course, it needs oil and makes a great deal of its own oil.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yeah, I mean, it won’t break Iran, because it has — Iran has other ways of actually exporting oil. It’ll obviously be a hardship, but it’ll be a much worse hardship on the Gulf states, if Iran actually dismantles their oil installations.

And that affects directly United States economy, because so much of Gulf oil money, gas money actually goes into high-tech United States. And much of the American, basically, modern technology is funded by subsidies from the various Gulf states. So it would have drastic repercussions on US economy.

AMY GOODMAN: What does Trump want? His latest, and what Vance said — right? Vance leaves the Hungarian prime minister, campaigning for him, Orbán, who was soundly defeated, and then goes to Islamabad to lead this negotiation. He says it’s all about nuclear weapons. Vance said, “The simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment that they will not seek a nuclear weapon and they will not seek the tools that would enable them [to quickly] achieve a nuclear weapon.” Your response?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Exactly. I mean, that’s exactly what the Obama agreement was.

AMY GOODMAN: That Trump pulled out of.

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Yes, which Trump pulled out of. But if you look at that agreement, basically, it said Iran had the right to enrich, but it had to be supervised to make sure it couldn’t enrich to the level of nuclear weapons.

So, Netanyahu cries it was vague agreement. In fact, it was very precise. Iran could enrich to 3.67 percent of uranium. That’s as precise as you can get. It was limited to 200 grams of enriched uranium. And also, it was — everything was supervised.

There were 140 international monitors, including American monitors. So, this was an incredibly tight procedure to make sure that Iran would actually fulfill its promise not to go into nuclear weapons.

When Trump pulled out of that, he basically unwound the whole system. And the best he can get is going back to that. So, demand that Iran should have no nuclear enrichment is a nonstarter. The best he could get is to go back, permit Iran to have enrichment, but with monitoring that it would not be weapon enrichment.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute. In a call with the Russian President Putin, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said a deal is, “not out of reach.” So, if you can talk about whether — where you see this all headed?

ERVAND ABRAHAMIAN: Well, there are people in Iran in the — basically, in the National Security Council, including Pezeshkian, who think that they can make a deal with the United States. And they’ve been there a long time.

But there are also people now, I think, hardliners, who are stronger now than before the war, who are arguing that you can’t make a deal with Trump. Even if Trump makes a deal, he could, the following week, decide he’s going to pull out. So it’s a nonstarter, from their point of view, unless US can actually make full commitments. And I don’t see how they can do that, because Trump is basically untrustworthy.

So, from their point of view, I think the hardliners in Iran could argue, persuasively, the more the pressure they have, the more the prices are going to go up; the more it goes up, sooner or later, the patient will have a heart attack or a stroke. So they have an upper hand at the moment.

Republished from Democracy Now! under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.

The Gaza Government Media Office has condemned “in the strongest terms” Israel’s storming of the Handala aid ship, calling it an act of “maritime piracy”, reports Al Jazeera.

“This blatant aggression represents a flagrant violation of international law and maritime navigation rules,” the office said in a statement.

“It reaffirms once again that the [illegal Israeli] occupation acts as a thuggish force outside the law, targeting every humanitarian initiative seeking to rescue more than 2.4 million besieged and starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

• READ MORE: Handala freedom ship loaded with Gaza aid bracing for Israeli forces
• The Freedom Flotilla Coalition web page
• Kia Ora Gaza page

The office also called on the international community, including the United Nations and rights groups, “to take an urgent and firm stance against this aggression and to work to secure international protection for the convoys”.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement today that the Israeli navy had intercepted the Gaza-bound Handala, and it was now heading towards Israel.

“The Israeli navy has stopped the vessel Navarn from illegally entering the maritime zone of the coast of Gaza,” said the statement, using the aid ship’s original name.

“The vessel is safely making its way to the shores of Israel,” it added. “All passengers are safe.”

Freedom Flotilla slams ‘abductions’
A statement by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition accused Israel military of “abducting” the 21 crew members of the Handala, saying the ship had been “violently intercepted by the Israeli military in international waters about 40 nautical miles from Gaza.

“At 23:43 EEST Palestine time, the Occupation cut the cameras on board Handala and we have lost all communication with our ship.

“The unarmed boat was carrying life-saving supplies when it was boarded by Israeli forces, its passengers abducted, and its cargo seized.

“The interception occurred in international waters outside Palestinian territorial waters off Gaza, in violation of international maritime law.”

The Handala carried a shipment of critical humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza, including baby formula, diapers, food, and medicine, the statement said.

“All cargo was non-military, civilian, and intended for direct distribution to a population facing deliberate starvation and medical collapse under Israel’s illegal blockade.”

The Handala carried 21 civilians representing 12 countries, including parliamentarians, lawyers, journalists, labour organisers, environmentalists, and other human rights defenders.

Seized crew members, journalists
The seized crew includes:

United States: Christian Smalls — Amazon Labor Union founder; Huwaida Arraf — Human rights attorney (Palestine/US); Jacob Berger — Jewish-American activist; Bob Suberi — Jewish US war veteran; Braedon Peluso — sailor and direct action activist; Dr Frank Romano — International lawyer and actor (France/US).

France: Emma Fourreau — MEP and activist (France/Sweden); Gabrielle Cathala — Parliamentarian and former humanitarian worker; Justine Kempf — nurse, Médecins du Monde; Ange Sahuquet — engineer and human rights activist.

Italy: Antonio Mazzeo — teacher, peace researcher, journalist; Antonio “Tony” La Picirella — climate and social justice organiser.

Spain: Santiago González Vallejo — economist and activist; Sergio Toribio — engineer and environmentalist.

Australia: Robert Martin — human rights activist; Tania “Tan” Safi — Journalist and organiser of Lebanese descent.

Norway: Vigdis Bjorvand — 70-year-old lifelong justice activist.

United Kingdom/France: Chloé Fiona Ludden — former UN staff and scientist.

Tunisia: Hatem Aouini — Trade unionist and internationalist activist.

The two journalists on board:

Morocco: Mohamed El Bakkali — senior journalist with Al Jazeera (based in Paris).

Iraq/United States: Waad Al Musa — cameraman and field reporter with Al Jazeera.

The attack on Handala is the third violent act by Israeli forces against Freedom Flotilla missions this year alone, said the statement.

“It follows the drone bombing of the civilian aid ship Conscience in European waters in May, which injured four people and disabled the vessel, and the illegal seizure of the Madleen in June, where Israeli forces abducted 12 civilians, including a Member of the European Parliament.

“Shortly before their abduction, the Handala‘s crew affirmed that they would be hunger-striking if detained by Israeli forces and not accepting any food from the Israeli Occupation Forces.”

Israeli officials have ignored the International Court of Justice’s binding orders that require the facilitation of humanitarian access to Gaza.

The continued attacks on peaceful civilian missions represent a grave violation of international law, said the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.

Kia Ora Gaza support for Handala
In Auckland, Kia Ora Gaza spokesperson Roger Fowler, who is recovering from cancer treatment, said in a statement:

“Kia Ora Gaza is a longtime member of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition and supports the current Handala civil mission to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza and end Israel’s campaign to wipe out the Palestinian population.

“All governments must urgently take strong effective action to stop the genocide and occupation and end all complicity with Israel. There are no Kiwis on the Handala which was intercepted under an enforced communications blackout today.”

Piracy is a growing threat in Papua New Guinea’s coastal waters and riverine waterways, warns National Capital District (NCD) water police officer-in-charge Senior Sergeant Justus Baupo.

Combating the problem needs a combined effort, he said.

He said piracy was normally carried out by armed criminals, most of them land-based using small high-powered craft to attack civilians in dinghies and canoes, inter-island ferries, and private yachts.

• READ MORE: Other PNG crime reports

More brazen attacks targeting barges and oceangoing ships had been attempted too.

Sergeant Baupo said fighting this new threat to the safety of Papuan New Guineans needed vigilance.

He said police were often handicapped and needed community assistance to deter piracy.

There were a lot of challenges faced by police officers, especially funding for accommodation, allowance, fuel, maintenance of the boat’s oil, fuel, parts, and engine.

Expensive exercise
He said it was quite an expensive exercise looking after police surveillance and a fast response boat.

“I have restless nights trying to figure out where I can get funds to fix the boat so it can run the next day,” he said.

“Superiors will ask that we need the boat here and there the next day, but the boat cannot move when one part or piece is not available, so it’s a challenge.”

He praised his men and women for persevering when out on the sea.

“Operating a boat is not easy. We are policemen and women but we need sailors’ skills and spirit out there. We live in a new environment, and they have adapted well,” he said.

“One thing about water police is that you are in the open ocean so you must know the tides, swells, the weather, reefs and where to go, how far to go while carrying out your duties.

“Seamanship is important because you will find yourself in some cases conducting search and rescue, so we have to prepare for all scenarios.

Milne Bay success
“Sometimes I feel for the men but because of the demand of work, they go to find water and biscuits, and we go out to sea.”

He said that their presence in Milne Bay for the last nine months had slowed down piracy there, according to local leaders.

The presence of the police boats was a huge deterrent in Milne Bay waters.

He said another emerging trend in piracy was the stealing of dinghies and motors and reselling them in neighboring provinces.

He cautioned civilians to be vigilant against pirates and report suspicious passengers to police via mobile phones.

Republished with permission.

Papua New Guinea’s death penalty Act of 1984 has been repealed by the National Parliament and all prisoners on death row have had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

With the new legislation, the penalty for acts of willful murder due to sorcery, aggravated rape, robbery with violence, treason, piracy and willful murder all will face life imprisonment without parole, or parole after 30 years, after the death penalty provisions were repealed yesterday.

These were among 11 Bills passed by the National Parliament over the past two days before rising and adjourning to February 22.

• READ MORE:  After nearly 70 years, the death penalty again becomes a real prospect in Papua New Guinea
• Other reports on the PNG death sentence

Six of these Bills were presented by Justice Minister Bryan Kramer, who proposed amendments to some of the laws to capture the current needs. They include amendments to the Criminal Code Acts to repeal the death penalty Act 1984.

Kramer said 14 prisoners (including two who have escaped from prison) were put on death row by the courts but remained in custody for a long time because the state failed to put the administrative mechanism and infrastructure in place to implement the death penalty.

He said there were nine other prisoners who were sentenced to death since the reintroduction of the death penalty into the criminal justice system in 1991 but some of them have died awaiting execution while others have appealed or reviewed their sentences at the Supreme Court.

He said one of the inabilities to implement the death penalty is the lack of necessary administrative mechanisms and infrastructures in place to carry out the executions.

Difficult to implement
“This was largely attributed to the difficulty presented by a single method of implementation and administration of the death penalty in the past, which was to be done by hanging,” Kramer said.

“It was in view of this that the government amended Section 614 of the Criminal Code Act, which was intended to give greater flexibility and capability to enable the state to implement the death penalty.

“It provided a range of methods of execution of the death penalty for the government to choose from depending on the government’s preparedness and availability of administrative mechanism and infrastructure suitable to that particular method of execution,” he said.

Kramer said that in 2013 the Chief Secretary put together a technical team comprising of officials from the relevant government agencies and the team went on a fact-finding tour of the United States, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. On their return, the team submitted a report titled: “Implementing the death penalty in PNG”.

He said the NEC endorsed and approved the guidelines for the implementation of the death penalty by lethal injection, firing squad and by hanging, but the government had not used any of these methods proposed.

He said according to the report it would be practically difficult to implement all three methods as they would require different protocols and equipment to be used effectively.

“As such, the government does not have the administrative mechanism and the infrastructure to implement the death penalty.

“Therefore, the Criminal Code Act was reviewed to amend all offences that have the penalty of death to be repealed and replaced with the penalty of life imprisonment with or without parole, or with eligibility for parole after 30 years,” he said.

Republished with permission from the PNG Post-Courier.

Ten years ago, a dinghy carrying 5 medical research institute scientists disappeared in Papua New Guinea’s West New Britain waters.

The scientists — 3 men and 2 women — have never been found.

A few weeks ago, the PNG Medical Research Institute finally closed its book on the missing five.

• READ MORE: Other reports on PNG piracy
• Global piracy on The Conversation

What remains interesting in this case is an open finding in a coronial inquest several years ago, which did not rule out an act of piracy in its conclusion.

Last Friday, hundreds of angry protesters marched in the town of Buka, raising their voices against piracy and venting their anger against the new Autonomous Region of Bougainville for failing to take action against sea pirates.

They, just like every other Papua New Guinean, have every right to know how their loved ones have vanished without a trace while travelling along the shores or out in the open oceans.

In recent years in East New Britain, sea pirates caught by police were prosecuted and sentenced to death.

In the Gulf of Papua, travellers from Gulf and Western fall victim to sea and river pirates.

Along the Northern Province waters and Milne Bay waters, sea piracy is becoming a common law and order issue. In the last two years, wanted criminal Tommy Baker led a string of piracy attacks.

He is still on the run.

Papua New Guinea has a vast coastline and many islands.

In fact, our coastline is said to be 5,152 km (3,201 miles) long. And out in the open seas, there are many big islands and even more smaller islands, many uninhabited.

Policing the vast coastline and the islands is nonexistent.

Once in a while, we hear of piracy, boats shot up, people robbed, women kidnapped and sexually abused, children subjected to trauma.

Some victims are never to be heard of or seen again.

In the absence of anything resembling a coast guard, the government needs to have a policy on this that works for public confidence, public protection and interest.

The NMSA needs to seriously consider this as a national threat to the safety of our travelling public who use small craft and smalls ships for movement of passengers and cargo.

Police boats given to maritime provinces are virtually useless given that they are hardly used on anti-piracy patrols due to lack of funding.

Boat travellers and seagoing ships are tired of this. Incidences of piracy are now being reported on our country’s big rivers and waterways. This is adding to the fear our people face.

Some years ago, the NMSA made it compulsory for small boats to be registered, and owners to provide emergency equipment on their craft.

This law is not effective, just as taxi meters for taxi operators is non operable on land.

In this age of rocket science, internet and robots, and drones, finding missing boats or hijacked craft using GPS, should be made mandatory and the costs passed onto dinghy manufacturers to include Emergency Position Indicator Radio Beacon on their products.

Frankly, we have had enough of piracy on the high seas and on our rivers.

This editorial was published by the PNG Post-Courier today, 29 September 2021.

Two attempts by Papua New Guinea’s most wanted man, Tommy Baker, to rescue 11 members of his notorious gang detained at the Giligili jail in Alotau, Milne Bay Province, last week have failed.

But a third – bigger – is being planned for this week, security sources have revealed.

Giligili jail commander Chief Superintendent Ray Gideon, speaking to the PNG Post-Courier from Alotau, said the gang’s focus was now being shifted to the prison and other law and order institutions.

• READ MORE: Other coverage of PNG criminal gangs
• PNG deploys troops to violence-plagued Alotau

He has requested additional manpower from Correctional Services headquarters. Some men were flown in from Port Moresby on Sunday to boost prison manpower to counter any attacks by the gang.

Chief Superintendent Gideon said the criminal gangs had turned their focus on Giligili prison after targeting government properties in town two weeks ago.

“Intelligence reports have indicated another attack will happen next week, but we have requested for and received additional manpower, and are ready for any possible attack,” he said.

He said the two attempts to rescue the gang members were made last Wednesday night between 8 and 9pm and again on Saturday night between 11pm and 12 midnight.

Smart intelligence
However, constant police patrols in the area and smart intelligence gathering from communities have helped them stave off the attacks.

“The prison institution is under threat because some of the criminal elements are inside and attempts have been made to rescue their friends but officers are manning all the possible attack positions,” Gideon said.

He said more than 50 gang members had walked from Rabaraba to Giligili and were preparing to attack the jail. But police mobile squad patrols, acting on community tip-offs and mobile phone tracking technology, averted what could have been a nasty attack.

He said the gang members escaped back into the forest when their plan failed. On Saturday, between 11pm to 12am about 20 criminal gang members took the same route to attack the prison but they were disturbed again by regular police patrols along the highway.

He said police and security forces were using technology and community support to track the movements of the Baker gang and other criminal elements who may be supporting him.

“I have sent a request and reinforcements have arrived today (Sunday) to help us with manpower,” Chief Superintendent Gideon said.

He said criminals were recruiting men throughout the province to fight against the government agencies who were against them, recruiting from as far as Normanby Island, Fergusson Island, Misima Island, Rabaraba and few other districts, including Alotau.

High powered guns
“They are coming in big numbers with high powered guns and ammunitions, our firearms cannot contain these people, it looked like they are getting firearms from another place and coming to attack the people.”

He said so far 11 remandees had been taken in last week, with 20 others detained in police cells expected to be brought into the prison this week.

He said the prison officers were intact and working 24 hours and had planned their emergency attack approaches, exit routes for families and how to go about reporting if anything happened.

He said police were constantly patrolling the entire township and along the highway while focusing their concentration in the town because of the government properties.

Marjorie Finkeo is a PNG Post-Courier reporter.

Papua New Guinea’s New Ireland Governor Sir Julius Chan has met and thanked Captain Nathan Tai Tombe and crew of the HMPNGS Moresby for their “brave action” in intercepting and impounding a foreign vessel off the coast at the weekend, reports the PNG Post-Courier.

Eight crew on the unregistered ship were arrested and charged – one of them wounded in the boarding operation.

Sir Julius was unaware of the action, but was inspecting a new fish processing plant in which the New Ireland government is a joint venture partner, with Arthur Jones and his company, PMAX, officials said yesterday.

• READ MORE: Drama at sea – PNG Navy detains 8 alleged pirates, 1 wounded
• Captain of coke ‘mothership’ which fled Australia shot by PNG navy

When Sir Julius arrived at the site, he noted the PNG Navy vessel docked at the adjacent wharf and asked Jones what the vessel was there for.

He was told the HMPNGS Moresby had intercepted an unregistered foreign vessel at sea near Kavieng and had forced it to come to port.

Sir Julius immediately visited the docked vessel and the captain and crew.

On recognising the former prime minister, the crew double-timed from the ship and mustered on the dock, where they saluted Sir Julius on his arrival.

Sir Julius then introduced himself to Captain Tombe, who proceeded to explain what had happened two days before.

Warned by bullhorn
The Moresby intercepted the foreign vessel and warned the crew of the ship by bullhorm to stop for inspection.

However, the warning was ignored. Warning shots which were fired over the bow of the ship were also ignored.

An update on the Chinese vessel #PNG Defence Force Navy intercepted today: the AFP was involved with the operation which saw the illegal vessel brought back to Kavieng. Former PM Sir Julius Chan congratulated the team. The 8 Chinese citizens have been arrested and charged. pic.twitter.com/HclD2oUHai

— Deni ToKunai (@Tavurvur) August 25, 2020

As a result, the HMPNGS Moresby drew alongside the vessel and fired aboard, wounding one crew member.

Following this, the ship pulled up and was ordered to accompany the Moresby to Kavieng, where it is at anchor, with the wounded crew member in Kavieng Hospital.

Sir Julius expressed his thanks to Captain Tombe and his crew, and invited the captain and several crew members to accompany him on his inspection of Arthur Jones’ rehabilitated fish processing plant.

Following the inspection of the plant, Sir Julius invited Captain Tombe to accompany him on a tour of the new New Ireland Legislative Assembly building, which is scheduled to be officially on September 15 and 16.

Captain Tombe, who hails from Jiwaka province, said he and his crew were stunned at the opportunity to meet Sir Julius.

“You don’t get a chance to meet someone like Sir Julius every day,” Tombe said.

“And for him to recognise us for the work we do was just amazing.

“He is a great man.”

The Papua Defence Force’s Navy has intercepted what news media have described as a suspected Chinese pirate vessel and have detained eight crew members, one with gunshot wounds.

EMTV News reporter Jeremy Mogi reported last night that the unregistered ship had been boarded between Kavieng and Manus after a routine patrol noticed suspicious movement on board.

Yesterday’s The National front page splashed the story under a banner headline: “Drama at Sea”.

• READ MORE: 21 foreigners suspected or working illegally at PNG logging sites detained

According to EMTV, sources from Lombrum Naval Base said 8 crew members of the unnamed vessel had been detained, one of whom is currently admitted at Kavieng General Hospital after receiving gunshot wounds.

The vessel is believed to be operating illegally in PNG waters, with the source saying the navy took aggressive action after non-compliance by the crew who had refused to allow the navy to board the ship.

At present, all crew members are being interrogated by PNG Customs officials with assistance from the Australian Federal Police.

In 2017, the same vessel was intercepted in the Milne Bay waters, with cocaine also being seized from the vessel.

Sighted off New Ireland
Earlier, The National’s Miriam Zarriga reported that an official said the ship had been sighted in waters off New Ireland on Saturday. The navy fired at it when it ignored orders to stop, injuring one of its crew members.

PNG Defence Force Chief-of-Staff Captain Philip Polewara told The National that the unregistered foreign vessel was then escorted back to Kavieng Port by naval officers on the HMPNGS Moresby.

Captain Polewara confirmed that the PNGDF was now assisting police in their investigations into the vessel.

“As it is, I am unable to reveal any more information but can confirm the boat has no name, is unregistered and no other information can be found on it,” he said.

“Only one crew member on board is able to speak English.

“There is no fish on board as well.”

It is understood that naval officers on the HMPNGS Moresby had warned the crew members of the foreign vessel to stop.

But it continued to motor away.

Second warning shot
The officers fired another warning shot but to no avail.

The navy ship then pulled up alongside the vessel and fired shots, wounding the crew member.

A police source in New Ireland confirmed with The National that the crew member who was shot was recovering at the Kavieng General Hospital after an operation.

The vessel is anchored off Kavieng port wharf.

New Ireland police and the provincial administration confirmed yesterday that the incident occurred on Saturday evening as the HMPNGS Moresby was leaving for Lombrum Naval Base on Manus.

Police officers from Port Moresby, accompanied by members of the Australian Federal Police, arrived in the province on Monday to investigate what the ship was doing in the area.

Officers from the police, customs, National Fisheries Authority and Defence Force searched the vessel and found only two passports.

On board were eight men who appeared to be from different countries.

The area where the vessel was intercepted between New Ireland and Manus is known to seafarers as the “Morgado Square”, a protected marine area barred to fishing.

News reports from The National and EMTV are republished by the Pacific Media Centre with permission.