Kidnapped by pirates, now stuck in Sri Lanka

Yu Feiyue can talk about being a hostage with some authority.

He went from being kidnapped by Somali pirates for nine months to being held by the Sri Lankan government. He's still there, he feels helpless and depressed, and says the Chinese government doesn't seem to care.

Yu captained the Taiwanese-registered ship Taiyuan No 227 from a Somali port on January 24 to Colombo in early February. Yu and his crew spent about a month trying to contact the ship's owner, Cai Mingxian of Taiwan, about their wages and the ship's handover.

But neither Cai nor his family was anywhere to be found. And the ordeal is not over yet. When Yu and his chief engineer Xu Jianxing - both from the 'fishermen's hometown' of Zhoushan, Zhejiang - tried to board flights to Shanghai on March 1, they were detained by Sri Lankan authorities, who told them that they must stay until new crew representatives arrive. Seven other crewmen, however, were allowed to go.

Yu and Xu said they had tried to contact the Chinese embassy in Colombo at least 10 times in the past three weeks. Zhang Xuehai, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Colombo, said it was still negotiating for the release of Yu and a colleague. Yu said that although embassy staff visited them occasionally and brought fruit, instant noodles and tea, they told the mariners they didn't know how this unprecedented case was going.

'Can't they do something more for us? I have told them many, many times that I want to go home and be reunited with my family,' said Yu, 53, in a phone interview from Colombo. 'I have been away from home for 18 months. My mother is in her 70s, and I heard that my younger brother, who was 42, died recently.'