Kidnappings for new trend for pirates: Bureau
Kidnappings for new trend for pirates: Bureau
Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur
In a disturbing new trend, sea hijackings and kidnappings for ransom in the busy shipping lane between Malaysia and Indonesia are on the rise, a watchdog group said Monday.
"The fight against piracy is threatened by a new trend that has seen pirates demanding ransom for the release of kidnapped crew members," the International Maritime Bureau's Kuala Lumpur- based piracy watch center said in its latest report.
Two such cases occurred in two months in the Malacca Straits around Indonesia's Aceh province, where separatists are fighting the government for an independent homeland, and there may have been more cases which were not reported because ship owners were threatened, the report says.
The agency said the separatist Free Aceh Movement has threatened to disrupt shipping in the straits, the narrow channel between peninsula Malaysia and Indonesia's Sumatra Island which is one of the world's busiest sea lanes and also considered the most pirate-infested.
Worldwide, 253 attacks were reported between Jan. 1 and the end of September, compared to 294 attacks in the same period in 2000, the bureau said.
While attacks overall were fewer, the number of hijackings more than doubled, from six in the first nine months of 2000 to 15 in the same period this year. And the number of times crews were taken hostage also increased, from 132 times in the first nine months of 2000 to 205 times in the same period this year.
Pirates were also more commonly using guns during their attacks. According to the report, 34 pirate attacks involved guns in the first nine months of 200, compared to 50 in 2001.
The report recorded fewer pirate attacks in Indonesia and the Malacca Straits in the first nine months of 2001 compared to 2000.
In the period covered by the report, there were 71 actual and attempted attacks reported in Indonesia, 14 in the Malacca Straits and 15 in Malaysia, the agency said. This compared to 90 attacks in Indonesia, 32 in the Malacca Straits and 15 in Malaysia for the same period in 2000.
Indonesia by far still has the worst piracy problem, with the next-nearest number of attacks occurring in India, which had 22 attacks in the period covered by the report.
Attacks in the Philippines rose from two in the first nine months of 2000 to seven in the same period this year, the agency said.
Last year, a record 469 piracy incidents were reported worldwide, an increase of 56 percent over 1999 and more than four times the number reported in 1991. Some 72 ship crew members were killed and 99 injured in 2000, up from 3 killed and 24 injured a year earlier.