The Hidden Globe

To examine maritime legal frameworks, Abrahamian profiles a cruise ship, focusing on the intersection of maritime law and the treatment of migrants and refugees, as well as on the flag of convenience (FOC) system.

The cruise ship at the center of the chapter was first put into service in 1975 in Finland as Gruziya, commissioned by the Soviet Black Sea Company and used as a passenger ferry and cruise ship. In 1991, after the collapse of the USSR, the ship was managed by Ukrainian state-owned company Blasco, which in 1994 was contracted by the US Department of Defense to assist the Military Sealift Command with the interdiction of Haitian migrants/asylees fleeing unrest and poverty.

The United States has been interdicting, or stopping and returning, Haitian migrants since at least the 1960s. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan’s government made a deal with Haiti that the US Coast Guard could board Haitian-flagged boats to detain and return those attempting to go to the US. Government officials held detainees to determine who would be allowed to enter the United States as an asylee, although between 1981 and 1991 only 11 people were found to have met the standard for asylum. Following a military coup in Haiti in 1991, the US government could no longer hold all of the potential asylees on their ships and began holding Haitians at Guantánamo Bay, a US military base on Cuban territory that the US “leases” from Cuba without the consent of the Cuban government. As a result of this structure, the US government argues that the US Constitution does not apply in Guantánamo. In 1993, the US Supreme Court ruled in Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, Inc. that it was legal for the Coast Guard to send “people back to dangerous places” (202), a practice known as refoulement, because the Coast Guard operates “extraterritorially” (i.e., offshore). In a show of his humanitarian bona fides, President Bill Clinton ordered a push to restart shipboard asylum assessment interviews, even as his administration continued to hold Haitians at Guantánamo. The Gruziya took part in this effort: Officials and staff lived aboard the vessel. Legal anthropologist Jeffrey Kahn described this extraterritorial migrant detention and evaluation system as “a laboratory” for “new forms of border governance” (205).

Later, the Gruziya—now renamed the Odessa Sky—worked as a cruise ship catering to Ukrainian immigrants along the St. Lawrence River in Canada. In 1995, Blasco, which still owned Odessa Sky, was in the process of going bankrupt, so the ship was held in Montréal after legal action from German creditors. However, because the ship sailed under a Liberian flag, her crew was left in legal limbo.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) sets the framework for maritime laws and treaties. It holds, generally, that 12 nautical miles offshore is national territory, 200 miles offshore is an Exclusive Economic Zone where resources are managed by the state but navigation is free, and everything else is open to “exploitation and navigation” (208). Generally, the flag of a ship determines which set of national laws govern onboard activity. FOCs are sold by small nations to generate revenue, allowing ships to operate in countries with more lax labor, environmental, and other laws. Trade unions criticize this system for allowing labor abuses and other malfeasance to occur without regulation or oversight.

A common source of FOCs is Panama. In the early 1900s, Panama opened its maritime registry to anyone. This is legal due to the 1905 Muscat Dhows ruling in Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague, which held that a country has the right to define its own standards for maritime registries. In the 1920s and 1930s, Panama became a popular FOC for Americans, particularly those looking to get around Prohibition restrictions and later, American neutrality laws during WWII. Panamanian flagged ships were also used to save Jewish refugees during WWII and provide supplies to anti-fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Over time, Panama began selling its flags at ever-higher prices. American businessman Edward Stettinius saw a market opportunity and began to work with the then president of Liberia, William Tubman, to create a similarly open maritime registry there. In 1948, Liberia passed Stettinius’s proposed legislation to sell flags. Stettinius’s firm would get 65% of the profits, the Liberian government would get 25% and 10% would go to charity. As of 2024, 15% of the world’s ships fly a Liberian flag. The Liberian flag registry is not run from Liberia; it is registered in Delaware and operates in Virginia. Liberian-flagged ships have been the source of many oil tanker spills.

In 1996, the Odessa Sky sailed to Wilhemshaven, Germany, to meet the demands of creditors. The Ukrainian sailors onboard suffered because they were in a legal limbo and not being paid by the owner company. A local nonprofit and Wilhemshaven residents did what they could to help the sailors. In 1998, the ship was finally sold to a Dutch company and the sailors were given backpay from the proceeds. 

From 2010, the ship was renamed the Salamis Filoxenia and was used for cruises out of Cyprus. In 2014, the Salamis responded to a distress call and picked up 345 Syrian asylum-seeking people on a sinking fishing trawler in the Black Sea. Many of the Syrian migrants subsequently disappeared following disembarkment, while others settled in Cyprus. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the company that owned the Salamis folded. It was arranged for the ship to be dismantled and sold for scrap via a network of single-use limited liability companies (LLCs) under a Palau FOC. Companies often used the Palau flag to get around EU and US environmental regulations around shipbreaking. The Salamis, renamed the Titan, was taken to a dangerously unregulated shipbreaking facility called Gadani in Pakistan. By 2022, the ship was “classified as dead” (232).