Cruise Bruise Blog
October 7, 2009
October 7, 2009
Antigua Loss Of Cruise Ship Sign Of Much More Complex Issues
Carnival Freedom stays, but Carnival Victory is out, after American cruise ship passengers off Carnival Victory in Antigua cause an international incident. Media from around the world tried to connect the incident to the recent announcement by Carnival Corp that Carnival Victory would no longer be calling at Antigua.
It would seem that Carnival is limiting their liability in Antigua, not because of Americans committing crimes in Antigua, or the perception that the police are brutal there. Instead, it could be that law enforcement in Antigua is ill-equipped and ineffectual, a condition the government supports.
Now, add in American policy that is proliferating crime, the perception that Antigua is no longer safe, an economy- battered island, and we have a recipe for ships not being filled to capacity. A check on Carnival Victory vacancies on October 5, 2009 for the October 11, 2009 sailing confirms that ship is not selling out. Other sailings through November also are not sold out, with suites heading the list of open categories.
John Maginley, Antigua and Barbuda tourism minister, said he learned of the Victory pull-out by email, the week before the public announcement. The email sent to him via a travel agent, said that Carnival would no longer be anchoring its Victory ship in Antigua as of January 3, 2010. Looking at how Carnival communicates with corporate partners, it is not hard to see why some passengers can not resolve complaints effectively.
On September 28, 2009, a former Caribbean diplomat, Sir Ronald Sanders, gets to the root of the problem on Antigua with an appeal to United States authorities to step in to curb what he described as "the gravest problem facing the countries of the Caribbean" - drugs and the crime that comes along with it.
Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda's former High Commissioner to London, says countries of the region are not capable of adequately fighting the scourge alone and without help the drug and crime situation will only get worse.
"Central American and Caribbean countries are overwhelmed by the crime that has developed as a consequence of drug trafficking. In many cases, their police forces are out-gunned by the weapons available to drug gangs, and they lack the numbers, the equipment and other resources to combat the problem," he recently told a group of high-ranking military officers from Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle-East at The Royal College of Defense Studies in London.
Sanders points to a trend by developed nations, especially the U.S., of deporting native born serious felons back to Antigua, after they commit crimes abroad. This has increased the density of serious criminals in Caribbean nations as a whole. He also blames the U.S. for irresponsibly selling automatic weapons to residents in Caribbean nations. It is a classic "today we arm them, tomorrow we fight them" strategy Americans are sadly known for.
"The US government could make an enormous contribution to resolving this huge problem by passing legislation and implementing machinery to control arms smuggling; by reviewing the practice of deporting convicted felons to their countries of origin; and by adopting measures to stop legal sale of assault weapons," Sanders said.
The former diplomat suggested that the approach of concentrating on cutting supply through eradication and interdiction had shown "limited success" and opined that "it is clearly time to rethink this strategy".
Looking back to October 22, 2008, this statement is supported. When the P&O Cruises' (Carnival Corp) Arcadia arrived at Southampton in the United Kingdom after cruising the Caribbean with a call in Antigua, the ship had aboard $2,000,000 in cocaine, smuggled aboard by a four passengers, all of them citizens of the UK.
Antigua has become financially strapped, with little available funding for fighting crimes. This was never more evident than on February 16, 2009, when I reported two cruise ship passengers were attacked in an attempted purse-snatching on Thursday February 05, 2009 in the tourist district of Redcliffe Quay.
The report goes on to say that although four cruise ships were in port at the time of the attack, there were no police anywhere near the incident. When police were called to the incident, it was learned that no police could come to the attack, they simply did not have anyone available. (story here)
On September 25, Chargé d'Affaires Dr D Brent Hardt of the US Embassy to the Eastern Caribbean and Antigua-Barbuda's Minister of National Security Dr Errol Cort officially opened a state-of-the-art regional cyber-forensics laboratory.
The lab is a partnership between the government of Antigua and Barbuda, which provided the facilities, and the United States, which provided over US$500,000 to equip the lab and US$200,000 to train technical experts from throughout the region in cyber-forensic investigation capabilities.
It is hard to project the image of being tough on crime while hosting shady online gambling operations, online credit card fraud operations and off-shore banking operations which are all popular with money launderers as well as organizations tied to terrorism.
Since at least 1999, before internet crime was even a vision, credit card fraud and the illegal drug trade has been a problem on Antigua. American John Allen Williams is testament to that fact. Williams, known better as John Allen Muhammad, aka The DC Sniper, set to die by lethal injection on November 10, 2009, was working a credit card scam in Antigua back in 1999.
He supplemented that scheme with immigration document fraud which in return helped the drug trade. Then, he fights with American forces abroad, comes back to the U.S. full of hatred, and begins cutting down innocent Americans in the street.
This penchant for violence came to a head on July 27, 2008. A British couple, Benjamin and Catherine Mullany, were murdered by two locals, Kaniel Martin, 22, and Avie Howell, 18, while on their honeymoon at a local high-end resort. Robbery of the two medical professionals from Wales had been the motive.
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