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| | | Piracy and Armed Robbery at Sea |
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|  In October 1999, the cargo ship Alondra Rainbow left the Indonesian port of Kuala Tanjung bound for the port of Mike in Japan. It never arrived. Instead, the ship was boarded by armed pirates who put the 17 crew members in an inflatable liferaft and set them adrift. Although they were passed by six ships, it was not until eleven days later that they were finally rescued by fishermen. In September 1998, the Panama-registered Tenyu also disappeared in the Straits of Malacca while en route from Indonesia for the Republic of Korea with a cargo of aluminium ingots. It later reappeared, but with a different name and crew. It is almost certain that the original crew of 17 were murdered. In November 1998, the bulk carrier MV Cheung Son was attacked by pirates in the South China Sea. Its crew of 23 were shot and their bodies thrown overboard, weighted down to make them sink. Not all did so. Fishermen off the coast of China later found six bodies in their nets, still bound and gagged. | | | | These attacks would be shocking if they were isolated cases. But according to reports compiled by IMO, between 1984 and the end of November 1999, there had been 1,587 attacks by pirates on ships around the world. In some areas these attacks involved a disturbing increase in violence. IMO estimates that incidents of piracy and armed robbery against ships are under-reported by a factor of two. Several reasons have been suggested, including fear that a successful act of piracy will reflect on the master's competence; concern that such a report would embarrass the State in whose territorial waters the act occurred (the coastal State); the belief that an investigation would disrupt the vessel's schedule; and the possibility that shipowners' insurance would increase. The IMO figures show that, between June and November 1999 one security guard was killed, one crew member went missing, thirteen crew members were assaulted and thirteen others were taken hostage, while two ships were hijacked or destroyed. | | | | To most people, the surprising thing is not that piracy can be violent, but that it is happening at all. Although piracy has existed almost as long as shipping and trade, it seemed by the end of the 19th century that it had at last been eliminated. In more recent times, it was regarded as an interesting historical problem associated with the skull and crossbones flag, galleons of gold and villains carrying cutlasses: wicked, but with a dash of excitement and even romance. The fact that piracy was always a crime, often vicious and usually murderous, was forgotten or ignored.
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