This is the second part in a three-part column. Last week I provided readers with a scenario in which, "ten hours ago Brad Gilman, a former captain of a local ferry boat, forcibly took over a ferry boat with a dozen people on board." He will release three hostages in exchange for three met demands and descriptions were given of both the demands and the hostages. For more details, please see the column online at The Korea Times.
The responses to this column were so great I have expanded this project from a two-part column to a three-part column. In today's column I will look at the demands of the hostage taker. Next week I will examine the dilemma of which hostages should be freed.
I want to answer a question raised by a couple letters: why is the debate column about an ethical dilemma? Well, quite simply it is because this too is debatable.
Who decides what is right and wrong? In this scenario, you are given a near god-like power of deciding who lives and who may die. The first question to consider is whether you negotiate with such demands. The captor in this scenario does not seem to be part of some broader terrorist organization, but a disgruntled former employee. And since the negotiation of three demands for three hostages was made before you arrived on the scene you should probably honor it so as not to further agitate the hostage taker. Meeting each of the demands may in itself prove problematic though.
Let us consider the demands. The first demand was to speak to his ex-wife on the phone. This is a bit dangerous because the couple is not together anymore and the conversation may not go well even if the ex-wife agrees to talk on the phone, which she may not do. One demand is for food and drinks for everyone on board. This seems a reasonable request and the fact that someone will be freed to get this is a good sign. The final demand is the most problematic; he wants to speak on the phone to his ex-boss. The upside is that the request is for a phone call and not a face-to-face conversation. Still, the conversation is with someone that is unstable and most likely has an axe to grind with his former boss. This conversation might make him more hostile, which would not help bring the scenario to an end. The order I would recommend for providing his demands is as follows: as food is being delivered have the ex-boss call, then end that call by having the phone call come from the ex-wife. This would allow for everyone to stop being hungry and by having the ex-wife call come second, any anger that comes from talking to a former boss might be allayed by talking to the ex-wife. If the ex-wife or ex-boss have a negative relation with the captor it might be more convenient not to have the phone calls go through.
Next week I will conclude this column by discussing the choices of who to free. If you want to send in your suggests ions, please send them to me at Hatridge@gmail.com.
Roger Hatridge coaches debate and teaches literature in Seoul. He can be reached at Hatridge@gmail.com