Ship captains have written to maritime authorities expressing fears for their lives on voyages through the Malacca Strait after a spate of violent kidnappings last month, an ocean crime watchdog reported yesterday.
The Indonesian, Singapore and Malaysian navies began coordinated patrols of the Strait of Malacca shipping lanes yesterday to combat piracy and terrorism in the vital and dangerous waterway through which more than one-quarter of world trade passes.
"A few weeks ago the situation in the Malacca Strait was pretty bad, especially in the north," said Noel Choong, manager of the UK-based International Maritime Bureau's (IMB) Asian office.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"A lot of ships are very concerned about their own safety," Choong said.
Singapore is particularly anxious about lawlessness in and around the Malacca Strait, which it believes could be a prime target for a terrorist attack.
The IMB wrote three letters to Indonesian authorities seeking tougher patrols after pirates armed with automatic machine guns and grenades attacked commercial ships in a northern region of the Malacca Strait off Indonesia's Aceh province last month.
"A lot of ships were being shot at and once the ship stopped they would kidnap the captain and the chief engineer," Choong said from Kuala Lumpur.
"The captains have been writing us and asking us if they are kidnapped what is going to happen, stuff like that," he said.
In one 12-day period from June 4, the IMB received reports of eight serious incidents, mainly kidnappings of senior crew members, followed by ransom demands for their release, he said.
Indonesian authorities responded by sending patrols, reducing the frequency of attacks.
"They have taken some form of action," Choong said.
The attacks have gone down and are now under control," Choong said.
"Things are better now than a few weeks ago, where a lot of ships were being shot at. But we are still monitoring the situation and we have to give it a few weeks," he said.
"We just hope they will maintain whatever they are doing," he said.
"The moments the boats come back, within a matter of time it will start again," Choong said.
The IMB recorded 445 pirate attacks last year.
That figure was the second-highest since the bureau began compiling data in 1992, and of those about one-third took place in Indonesian waters, including in the Malacca Strait.
More than 50,000 commercial vessels sail the 805km channel between the Indonesian island of Sumatra and the Malaysian peninsula to Singapore each year.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RELATIONS: Cultural spats, such as China’s claims over the origins of kimchi, have soured public opinion in South Korea against Beijing over the past few years Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday met South Korean counterpart Lee Jae-myung, after taking center stage at an Asian summit in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s departure. The talks on the sidelines of the APEC gathering came the final day of Xi’s first trip to South Korea in more than a decade, and a day after his meeting with the Canadian prime minister that was a reset of the nations’ damaged ties. Trump had flown to South Korea for the summit, but promptly jetted home on Thursday after sealing a trade war pause with Xi, with the two
RSS