Well, should international law allow merchant ships to carry small arms, up to and including RPG's or similar weapons sufficient to repel pirates attacking from small craft?
First off.. The article is out right lieing...
Pirates successfully attacked another unarmed ship on Monday, leaving 28 members of its crew dead.
Never happened. What did happen was they took a North Korean ship with 28 crew hostage. No one died.
And they miss name the company.... Its called Maersk Line, not Maersk Shipping Line.
Guess the right wing moonie paper cant pay for fact checkers...
On the subject you put up.
Putting armed guards on merchant shipping is not new and should be done in pirate infested waters.
But on the flip side it will cost lives, both pirate, crew and guards. The only lives lost so far in the area have been when rescue attempts have been made or the naval forces have fired on the wrong ships or the pirates have attacked armed ships. Considering the amount of ships hijacked and the amount of ships needing to go through the area then it is surprising few deaths. Arming the ships will increase the deaths considerably on all sides.
And that is when the insurance companies and bean counters come into the picture and I have doubts that small companies will be able to afford the premiums. Mærsk will have no problems, and I bet they could get the US government to pay for it, but fishermen, other nations cargo ships and so on.. would be very hard.
And then there is the issue of having ports accept armed ships, and the sovereignty issue, not to mention the legal issue involved if the armed guards make a mistake.
On top of that you have the issue.. what laws should be followed.. the flag of the ship or the owner of the ship when it comes to legal issues related to fighting off pirates. In Mærsk Alabama's case it could be a mine field, since the ship is registered in the US (under US flag) but owned by a Danish company..
Sadly it is not as cut and dry as many would like including me.