Piracy still haunts Southeast Asian waters

Piracy still haunts Southeast Asian waters

By Tan Ee Lyn

SINGAPORE (Reuter): The gray speedboat halted abruptly alongside the fishing vessel and before the fishermen knew what was happening, a salvo of gunshots shattered the silence and punched holes into the trawler.

Brandishing guns and knives, six men in camouflaged army uniforms accused the Singapore-flagged trawler of intruding into Indonesian waters. Three of them boarded and ransacked the vessel, taking away Singapore $1,360 (US$971) and a necklace.

Frustrated by the mediocre takings, the pirates, talking in what was recognizably Bahasa Indonesia, demanded S$30,000 ($21,400) and forced trawler owner Lee Boon Swee to radio for the money.

"Lee radioed his counterpart (in a boat nearby) and the friend managed to gather S$15,000 ($10,700) and surrendered the sum to the pirates. Only then were the fishermen released," an officer with the Kuala Lumpur-based Regional Piracy Center (RPC), an affiliate of the International Maritime Bureau, told Reuters.

To cap their raid, the pirates also made off with the vessel's catch of shrimp and fish.

The attack, lasting 3-1/2 hours on the afternoon of May 18 off Indonesia's Bintan island, was just one example of the rising number of violent incidents of piracy in Southeast Asian waters this year.

While the official number of attacks stood at 24 as of late May, up from the 14 cases in the same 1994 period, sources said many more attacks go unreported, especially if they do not involve massive sums or fatalities.

"The pirates just round up trawlers in an area and extort money, a few hundred dollars from each boat. If they don't pay up, the pirates will just cut their fishing nets," a captain with a shipping-related firm said.

"It would cost a lot more to repair the nets, not forgetting the loss of income in the meantime," he said, adding the victims usually pay and only seldom file a report.

Piracy in Southeast Asia is high and has increased compared with the rest of the world, accounting for 41 percent of the 58 cases worldwide by the end of May this year, according to RPC figures. In the same period in 1994, piracy in the region accounted for 35 percent of 40 cases.

Authorities in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia were jolted on Dec. 11, 1992 when a ship's master and chief officer, both Britons, were killed as their Danish-owned, Bahama-flagged dry cargo vessel was traveling in the Sunda Straits between the Indonesia's Sumatra and Java islands.

Mutiny

While the surviving crew said the Britons were killed by two armed pirates believed to be Indonesians, Indonesian authorities have said the case was mutiny, informed sources said.

Piracy in Southeast Asian seas rose to notoriety in the late 1980s. "From 1987, piracy (against Danish-flagged ships) was more frequent around Singapore, South China Sea and Malacca Straits," H.H. Petersen of the Danish Shipowners Association in Copenhagen told Reuters in a telephone interview.

After a spate of attacks in early 1992, Indonesia and Singapore started joint coordinated patrols, Teh Kong Leong of Singapore's Marine Department said.

While attacks in Southeast Asia have risen again in the last two years, industry sources said waters in this part of the world are safer now than they were in the early 1990s.

"In 1990, there were at least 200 reported cases of piracy attacks in the Malacca Straits alone. Incidents were highlighted, and when Singapore and Indonesia started to conduct joint patrols, there was a drastic reduction. Now, the situation is much better," the RPC officer said.

Petersen said: "We are still threatened... when we move to the Philippines, there is (an) increase in attacks... but we see coordinated efforts by countries involved to remedy the problem."

So long as the attacks continue, there are human as well as business costs. One survivor told Reuters that a sense of isolation and utter helplessness resulting from the attack frequently haunts her.

"When I sleep at night and someone comes in the room, I still get a fright, it was so terrifying," said a woman in her late 30s, who experienced a pirate attack while at sea with her captain-husband aboard a cargo ship five years ago.