This House would criminalise the payment of ransom.

[jonworgs]

The use of hostages, in an attempt to manipulate others for cash or political gain, is on the increase. Within the Middle East we see Islamic terrorist organisations kidnapping Israeli soldiers for the release of Palestinian prisoners, and almost daily the exploits of Somalian Pirates are splashed across the pages of the world news. The frequency of these occurences is on the increase and military strategies are having a limited impact, therefore other solutions have to be mooted.

The aim of this thread is for union society members to develop arguments for or against the following proposal and the basic analysis that stems from it.

In order to solve this problem, the international community will criminalise the payment of ransom. In otherwords, if somone is found paying ransom for the release of a hostage, then they will recieve a very substantial and incredibly disproportionate punishment. This level of disproportionality will create an overwhelming detterent that discourages anyone from paying ransom ever again. This renders hostage-taking as a pointless activity that will be percieved as 100%ineffective. Therefore the use of kidnapping as a means of gaining cash or political gain will cease. Obviously it will take time to establish this precedent but there is no reason why policy cannot be implemented immediately.

Please feel free to comment and make arguments on either sides of this debate.

Jon Worgan
Tournament Secretary xxx

[edmason]

Every time you give in to terrorist demands, to kidnappers ransoms or to the will of rogue states you commit two crimes: one, you break your resolve, tarnsihing your reputation and two, you cause significant harms to the person or people who will, inevitably, be in the same or worse situation as you in the future.

Take Israel, a case study for almost every debatable issue on the planet. When it negotiates with Palestinian extremists it commits both these crimes. Firstly it sends out the message that by kidnapping Israeli soldiers and making demands by putting a video on AlJazeera, you can get what you want by not following the democratic process.

So paying ransom, giving into terrorist demands, breeds violence. It teaches young Arabs, Colombians or Somalis that the only way to get out of their current situation is to kidnap, extort and terrorise.

Secondly, to make the slippery slope argument, paying ransom causes significant and inescapable harms to those who come after you. If Meg Ryan pays the $500'000 ransom for her husband demanded by Colombian guerillas (Proof of Life), the next poor couple in the same situation will have to pay over a million. Or more.

The mistake is to think of kidnap and ransom as isolated incidents. It is, in fact, a huge, multi-million dollar enterprise and, where fear, panic and heartache prevail amongst the victims adn their families, K&R is simply a form of economic transaction. The guerillas, the prirates, the freedom fighters see their captives as paychecks, pure and simple. They are assets, nothing more.

This means that when the demand increases( people paying ransoms), the price too will increase (the ransom demanded rises). Supply too will inevitably increase, with more people being kidnapped, as the potential to generate funds for other actiities - purchasing arms, bribing officials.

Paying ransom is bad. It causes harms to you adn to others who you may not even meet. If you are a state, it deliberately and unjustly raises the cost to taxpayers and is detrimental to their security and well-being. As big a deterrent as possible is needed, and the whole industry, both K and R, should be illegal.