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A hostage is a person seized by an abductor in order to compel another party, one which places a high value on the liberty, well-being and safety of the person seized—such as a relative, employer, law enforcement, or government—to act, or refrain from acting, in a certain way, often under threat of serious physical harm or death to the hostage(s) after expiration of an ultimatum. The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition defines a hostage as "a person who is handed over by one of two belligerent parties to the other or seized as security for the carrying out of an agreement, or as a preventive measure against certain acts of war."[1]
A party who seizes one or more hostages is known as a hostage-taker; if the hostages are present voluntarily, then the receiver is known as a host.
In civil society, along with kidnapping for ransom and human trafficking (often willing to ransom its captives when lucrative or to trade on influence), hostage taking is a criminal activity. In the military context, hostages are distinct from prisoners of war—despite prisoners being used as collateral in prisoner exchange—and hostage taking is regarded as a war crime.
Hostage taking and kidnapping are prone to blend together. When the goal is strictly financial, the primary lens is one of extortion, even in the face of a severe threat to the safety of the captive person if the financial negotiation fails; conversely, when the goal is political or geopolitical, the primary lens is terrorism.
When looking at hostage-taking from the primary lens of terrorism, there are reasons to believe that certain government types are more susceptible to hostage-taking terrorism than others. In democratic governments, for example, elements related to their democratic ideals such as freedom of the press, constraints on the executive, free elections, and higher levels of civil liberties create favorable outcomes that enable hostage-takers to target these countries specifically. Hostage-takers understand that by targeting democratic governments, they are more likely to seek concessions and/or negotiate with them based on the level of accountability they must face from their citizens who elect them into office, and the media within the country which reports on such events in a capacity independent from the state.[2]
- ^ One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hostage". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 801–802.
- ^ Lee, Chia-yi (March 2013). "Democracy, civil liberties, and hostage-taking terrorism". Journal of Peace Research. 50 (2): 235–248. doi:10.1177/0022343312465424.
