Pirates roaming the waters of Southeast Asia should be regarded as terrorists, Singapore's Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said amid a rising number of attacks on ships and tankers.
Wong said last week there should be no distinction between pirates operating for personal gain and terrorists, with the motives of anonymous attackers impossible to judge until they are caught.
PHOTO: AFP
"Although we talk about piracy or anti-piracy, if there's a crime conducted at sea sometimes we do not know whether it's pirates or terrorists who occupy the ship so we have to treat them all alike," he said.
"So in other words if it's piracy we treat it just like terrorism because it is difficult to identify the culprits concerned unless you board the ship."
Wong was speaking in the context of the growing piracy menace in Southeast Asia, with the threat particularly high in the waters between Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The region is also home to a range of Islamic terrorist and militant organizations, including the Jemaah Islamiyah group behind last year's Bali bombings and the notorious Abu Sayyaf kidnapping gang of the Philippines.
The London-based International Maritime Bureau, an industry watchdog, recently warned Indonesia's waters were the most piracy-prone in the world, with 87 incidents in the first nine months of this year resulting in 85 people being kidnapped and two killed.
It last month detailed a range of piracy attacks in the region, including the hijacking of an Indian-registered tanker off Indonesia's Bintan island, which is about an hour's sailing time from Singapore.
And a Singapore-owned tugboat, hijacked on Sept. 19 while sailing between from the city-state to Indonesia, was found more than a month later off Malaysia's northern Penang state.
Wong warned of the danger of an incident that initially looked like a piracy incident escalating into a terrorist attack.
"Terrorism camouflaged as piracy. That's a bigger concern for us than just simple piracy," he said, giving an example of assailants boarding a ship laden with liquid gas and sailing it into their target.
The International Maritime Board also reported last year an unusually high number of tugboats being hijacked and analysts have warned terrorists could load them with explosives to ram into ships or ports.
The Straits of Malacca, which form the busiest shipping line in the world, rank number one on the regional authorities' lists of immediate maritime piracy and terrorism concerns.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese