Sat, Oct 13, 2001 page24

• SE Asia steps up piracy battle

  HIGH-TECH GADGETS Piracy is increasing at an alarming rate, with Indonesia recording the largest number of pirate attacks of any country last year at 119 -- almost a quarter of the world's total

  • REUTERS
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  Standing aboard one of the 20 or so "3G" command boats the Singapore Coast Guard bought last year, he wears a white button-down shirt and shiny black leather shoes.

  Chong smiles and talks of international cooperation as clouds drift across a clear sky. It's hardly the stuff of sea tales.

  So when he says Singapore takes piracy seriously, adding "our boats are out all day patrolling," it seems vaguely comical, like an excuse for overgrown boys to play with high-tech gadgets.

  

  One of the Singapore Coast Guard's recently-purchased high-tech command boats makes its way past the skyline of the city-state, one of the world's busiest ports and increasingly under threat from piracy. Singapore is surrounded by some of the world's most dangerous waters, where incidents of piracy are among the highest in the world.

  PHOTO: REUTERS

  The need for the city state's third-generation fleet seems even more dubious when he says Singapore has not had a pirate attack since 1990. And even then it was nothing more than a camera stolen off a ship.

  But piracy is increasing at alarming rates in Southeast Asian waters and Chong takes his job, as quiet as it's been, seriously.

  Piracy, the bane of 17th and 18th century shipping, has re-emerged from the history books.

  According to the London-based International Maritime Bureau (IMB), there were 469 cases of piracy on the high seas and armed robbery of ships in territorial waters last year -- a 57 percent rise from 1999 and nearly four and a half times those in 1991.

  The level of violence also jumped, with 72 seafarers killed last year versus just three in 1999.

  Countries in the region are taking the threat seriously.

  Officials from 27 nations met in Tokyo recently to develop new guidelines to combat the scourge. Piracy was also likely to be on the agenda at an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) conference on transnational crime in Singapore that began on Oct. 11.

  Singapore, a tiny island at the end of the Malaya Peninsula, is the calm at the middle of a swashbuckling storm.

  The IMB says 195 pirate attacks and robberies were reported last year in the Singapore Strait, Malacca Strait and Indonesian waters.

  "The waters around Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are some of the most dangerous in the world," Noel Choong, manager of the IMB piracy center in Kuala Lumpur, said. "But that only happened after the 1997 economic crisis."

  With Singapore's economy in recession and talk of a long-term global economic slowdown, Choong is concerned piracy may spread.

  "For an Indonesian layman without work, piracy looks like a good option because it's harder to rob a bank than to rob a ship," he said. "Robbing a ship can be done at night in the dark, far from shore, in small, fast escape boats."

  Singapore is the world's busiest port in tonnage terms and the state's dependence on shipping to prop up its import-heavy economy makes piracy a serious concern.

  If shippers decided to steer clear of Southeast Asian waters, where narrow channels, shallow reefs and heavy traffic force boats to move slowly and thousands of tiny islands make pirate getaways easy, Singapore's economy would suffer a massive blow.

  Sarah Lockie, a spokeswoman at the Singapore office of Neptune Orient Lines, said the company is worried about the increase in the number of pirate attacks, especially in the Malacca and Singapore straits.

  "Apart from the losses and injuries which could result, and the trauma which follows such incidents, there is a real risk of a major accident if the ships' officers are distracted or prevented from carrying out their navigational duties," she said.

  Such an incident happened several years ago, when pirates let a fully laden tanker steam captainless down the Malacca Strait for 20 minutes.

  On the bridge of the Sandy Ray, one of Singapore's 3G boats, Chong points to two large radar screens full of yellow, blue and red blips.

  "Here's where we can see the good guys and the bad guys," he says.

  Every boat in Singapore's waters, which radiate about five miles from the country, appears on the terminals and is identified by routine call-ins as friend, neutral or enemy.

  If pirates try to ply their trade in Singapore waters, the fleet of 3G boats, backed up by the navy, are meant to outgun them with powerful inboard engines, radar, electro-optic cameras that judge exact distances -- and more traditional weapons like machine guns.

  Singapore has also stepped up coordination with its neighbors.

  Members of ASEAN hold to the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, including pursuing pirates 8km into territorial waters, but Singapore and Indonesia have signed an agreement on joint patrols and cross-border pursuits.

  So far Singapore's 3G boats, used to patrol for contraband and illegal immigrants as well as pirates, have done the trick.

  "Singapore is doing a better job than most countries in policing pirating," Choong of the IMB said.

  But the island state's initiatives have done little to curb piracy outside its waters.

  South of the Sandy Ray, beyond hundreds of mammoth cargo ships with names like the Kota Indah and the Panco 3, the Indonesian island of Batam rises from the flat sea horizon.

  A tropical escape for harried Singaporeans little more than 16km offshore, Batam and the islands around it have been called a pirate's haven.

  Although Chong dismissed the idea that an unusual number of pirates live there, Indonesia is the world's leading pirate lair.

  According to the IMB, Indonesia's 17,500 islands recorded the largest number of pirate attacks of any country last year at 119 -- almost one quarter of the world's total.
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