{"id":29668,"date":"2016-10-24T01:32:06","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T01:32:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/somali-pirates-hostages-ate-rats-to-survive\/"},"modified":"2016-10-24T01:32:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T01:32:04","slug":"somali-pirates-hostages-ate-rats-to-survive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/somali-pirates-hostages-ate-rats-to-survive\/","title":{"rendered":"Somali pirates’ hostages ‘ate rats’ to survive"},"content":{"rendered":"

{A group of sailors who were held hostage by Somali pirates for nearly five years survived in part by eating rats, one survivor has told the BBC.}<\/p>\n

Filipino sailor Arnel Balbero said they were also only given small amounts of water and felt like “the walking dead” by the end of their ordeal.<\/p>\n

The 26 sailors were seized on board their ship in 2012 and were eventually taken to Somalia.<\/p>\n

They were freed on Saturday, reportedly after a ransom was paid.<\/p>\n

The sailors were from China, the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Taiwan.<\/p>\n

Mr Balbero was among the crew of the FV Naham 3 when it was captured by Somali pirates south of the Seychelles. One crew member was killed during the capture, according to non-governmental organisation Oceans Beyond Piracy.<\/p>\n

A year later, the ship sank and the crew were brought onshore in Somalia. Two sailors subsequently died of illnesses.<\/p>\n

Mr Balbero told the BBC that the last four and a half years had left him and his compatriots “like walking dead”.<\/p>\n

Asked how the pirates treated them, he said: “They give us small amount of water only. We eat rat. Yes, we cook it in the forest.”<\/p>\n

“(We) just eat anything, anything. You feel hungry, you eat.”<\/p>\n

‘No water, no food, no medicine’<\/p>\n

He also spoke of their difficulties adjusting to life after their ordeal, saying: “I don’t know what is… outside of this world when this finish, so it’s very hard to start again.”<\/p>\n

Separately a clip has emerged of the survivors, which appeared to have been taken in 2014 by the pirates amid negotiations as proof that the hostages were still alive.<\/p>\n

The clip, released by a Taiwanese lawmaker who took part in the negotiations, shows the group of men looking thin and haggard and surrounded by masked gunmen.<\/p>\n

It then cuts to a man identified by Taiwanese media as Shen Jui-chang, the Taiwanese chief engineer of the hijacked ship.<\/p>\n

In the clip, Mr Shen says in Mandarin that the men were only given a litre of water a day to drink despite the heat. “There is no water, there is no food,” he said, adding that “every one of us has some kind of illness”.<\/p>\n

“The pirates won’t get medicine for you, they say that they don’t have money to buy medicine. That’s how two young men have already died for nothing,” he says.<\/p>\n

Taiwan’s foreign affairs ministry said the men were freed after a ransom was paid by the ship’s owner as well as groups contracted to negotiate with the pirates, Taiwanese media reported.<\/p>\n

The ship was Omani-flagged but owned by a Taiwanese company.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{A group of sailors who were held hostage by Somali pirates for nearly five years survived in part by eating rats, one survivor has told the BBC.} Filipino sailor Arnel Balbero said they were also only given small amounts of water and felt like “the walking dead” by the end of their ordeal. The 26 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-29668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29668\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29668"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=29668"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=29668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}