- Pirates staged 445 attacks last year, killing at least
21 people. How can they be stopped?
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- Legendary tales of pirating rogues running daring raids
on the high seas have provided bedtime entertainment for generations of
children. But the modern face of violent piracy could not be further from
the age-old myth of the heroic bucanneer.
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- The International Maritime Bureau reported a record number
of violent incidents in 2003, amid reports in recent years that machine-gun
attacks were soaring.
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- Numast, the shipping officer's union, sounded an alert
over the growing scourge of violent piracy which it fears could end in
ecological disaster, and threaten the future of the shipping industry if
left unchecked.
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- Union chiefs warned that British crews were vulnerable
to gun attacks, which rose by 50 per cent last year. In total, 644 incidents
of violence to ships crews were recorded.
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- Piracy attacks were the second highest on record last
year, with 21 crew fatalities - more than twice the number of deaths in
2002 - and six UK-flagged ships, plus 21 owned or managed from the UK,
falling victim to piracy. And with a further 71 crew and passengers listed
as missing, there are fears that the violence could have risen to the top
spot. The number of seafarers taken hostage last year almost doubled to
359, while 311 ships were boarded and 19 vessels hijacked.
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- Numast is urging the Government to enlist sea marshals
to accompany vulnerable vessels across piracy hotspots, such as the seas
off Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nigeria, and union officials have called
on the shipping industry to tighten security systems on cargo ships and
oil tankers carrying millions of pounds worth of fuel.
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- The union's general secretary, Brian Orrell, said a radical
review of Britain's shipping security was of paramount concern. "We
are still a maritime nation despite massive decline of our shipping industry.
We rely on shipping for 95 per cent of our trade. One of the worries is
if these attacks continue, they will ultimately become a threat to world
trade.
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- "There could also be a major ecological disaster
as a result of piracy in some busy straits. We are just complacent because
it has not yet happened but it is a disaster just waiting to occur,"
he said.
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- IMB's director, Captain Pottengal Mukundan, echoed the
need for urgent action. "That these ships carrying dangerous cargoes
may fall temporarily under the control of unauthorised and unqualified
individuals is a matter of concern, for both environmental and safety reasons,"
he said.
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- Piracy related deaths have risen sharply in recent times
in the Caribbean and off the African coast.
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- The murder of Antony Griplas, a British businessman,
by pirates near Zanzibar last year cast a shadow over the safety of thousands
of Britons living abroad.
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- The Greenpeace campaigner and yachtsman, Sir Peter Blake,
53, was executed in a pirate raid on his yacht in Brazil in December 2002,
and in September 1999, adventurer Alan MacLean, 28, was allegedly shot
and killed when a group of five pirates boarded his ship in the Indian
Ocean north-east of Somalia.
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- Incidents such as these are causing growing alarm in
the shipping community but more foreboding is the emerging trend towards
piracy terrorism.
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- Brian Orrell, Numast's general secretary, said security
in the shipping industry had become a blindspot for the Government which
international terrorists could exploit.
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- Britain's 500 ships could be "sitting ducks"
for a terrorist attack, he warned.
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- "In the post-September 11 world, it is completely
unacceptable that no real action is being taken against attacks that have
the potential to cause massive loss of life and huge environmental damage.
There is an emerging strain of terrorist piracy which desperately needs
to be addressed. These people have replaced their cutlasses with Kalashnikovs,"
he said.
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- In 2002, terrorists struck a French oil tanker, Limburg,
with explosives, off the coast of Yemen. Disaster was averted because the
tanker was only partly loaded.
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- The overall number of attacks on tankers last year rose
to 22 per cent of the total, a figure that many industry sources blame
on the diminshing crew numbers and primitive security systems on such ships.
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- Crew numbers have halved in the past 25 years due to
technological advancements and supertankers carrying up to 500,000 tons
of oil are regularly manned by a maximum crew of 22 people.
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- Mr Orrell criticised ship owners who, he said, were reluctant
to spend money on tightening security. "Some ship owners turn a blind,
Nelsonian eye to this problem. Most ships lack decent security equipment
such as CCTV and alarms."
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- The Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have acknowledged
the consequences of piracy, which is believed to cost the shipping industry
an estimated £300m a week.
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- In a bid to address the problem, Bill Rammel, a Foreign
Office minister, will meet with Numast to develop strategies.
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- Meanwhile, the Royal Navy has expressed its determination
to defend Britain from seaborne attack and said that RN convoys were already
operating in dangerous waters.
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- Speaking in this month's Navy News, an MoD in-house magazine,
first sea Admiral Sir Alan West acknowleged the piracy threat.
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- "These pirates are heavily armed, merciless and
bloodthirsty," he said.
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- While the presence of a warship in a region could act
as a deterrant, piracy could not be remedied on a national level alone
either with escort ships or sea marshals, he said. Royal Navy ships acting
in aggressive situations on international waters could cause a diplomatic
storm and without international co-operation, the war on pirates was lost.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=499001
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