Piracy surges on back of RI woes

Piracy surges on back of RI woes

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters): Pirate attacks worldwide surged 40
percent in 1999 as economic and political troubles in Indonesia
spurred a dramatic increase in incidents in Southeast Asia.

The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said in its annual
report on Monday that the number of actual and attempted pirate
raids increased to 285 last year from 202 in 1998.

But the number of seafarers killed fell to three last year
from 78 in 1998. "This could be due to greater efforts by
governments to combat piracy," the report said, citing the recent
sentencing to death of 13 pirates in China.

Indonesia accounted for 113 of the attacks, almost double its
1998 total of 60 and the lion's share of worldwide raids.

"We believe it was due to the economic situation and political
instability," Noel Choong, regional manager of the IMB's Piracy
Reporting Center in Malaysia's capital Kuala Lumpur, told
Reuters.

He was referring to upheavals in Indonesia after the
resignation of former President Soeharto in 1998.

There was also a dramatic increase in the number of attacks in
the Singapore Strait, which separates Singapore island from
Indonesia's Riau Archipelago and links the Strait of Malacca with
the South China Sea. There were 13 compared with just one in
1998.

But Choong said the frequency of attacks in that area dropped
sharply after the Singapore Coast Guard and the Indonesian Marine
Police stepped up patrols, and no incidents were reported in the
final three months of 1999.

"It is a very clear indication that with cooperation,
authorities can reduce piracy or eradicate it altogether," Choong
said.

The IMB has asked Indonesia to mount more patrols in its
waters. "There may be a decline in attacks if the Indonesian
authorities are serious about eradicating piracy in their
region," Choong said.

Seven countries or regions accounted for more than two thirds
of the attacks -- Indonesia (113), Bangladesh (23), Malaysia
(18), India (14), Singapore Strait (13), Somalia (11) and Nigeria
(11).

Attacks dropped from 15 to six in the Philippines and from 10
to two in Ecuador.

Most of the attacks -- 217 of 285 - involved pirates boarding
ships. There was a decrease in the number of hijackings to eight
from 17.

There were also fewer assaults on crews, but many more
incidents of crews taken hostage. Knives rather than guns were
the most common weapon.

The IMB cited government efforts to combat piracy as a
possible explanation for the dramatic decline in the number of
crew killed last year.

"In the last year, both India and China have arrested alleged
ship hijackers and China recently sentenced to death 13 of the
hijackers of MV Cheung Son, one of the country's most brutal
recent cases of piracy involving the murder of 23 Chinese
seamen," it said.

Last month, a court in China's southern province of Guangdong
sentenced the 13 men, all Chinese except for one Indonesian, to
death for clubbing the seamen to death and throwing their bodies
overboard tied to weights.

The pirates had posed as Chinese paramilitary police and
hijacked the 10,373 GRT (gross registered tonage) bulk carrier
Cheung Son in November 1998.