"Contemporary Piracy"

[Luiz]

Title: Contemporary Piracy
Author: Krzysztof Wilczyñski
A British couple was attacked, in Summer 1996, while sailing around Corfu Island (Greece) with assault rifles and grenades.
Months earlier armed men attacked a tanker "M/V Succi" when she was only a few hours from Singapore. The pirates tied up the crew and put them in a life boat and sailed off leaving them at sea. The crew was rescued but the tanker disappeared.
According to London based International Maritime Bureau, there were 224 incidents of piracy and armed robbery of ships that year.
According to Time Magazine article: A Plague of Pirates (Time Magazine, August 18, 1997) modern pirates operate differently depending on geographic location. Arabian Sea pirates use the most modern weapons while West Africans use knives and dugout canoes.
Brazilian pirates take advantage of the fact that Brazil does not have the Coast Guard. In the Far East piracy is controlled by organized crime and pirates kidnap the whole ships and cargo.
South China Sea is almost as dangerous a place, as it was in the ancient times. Chinese pirates are perhaps the most blatant often operating under the protection of the Chinese government.
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“My personal first encounter with pirates was in the “Singapore straits” , back in 1979 near Burlington Island. I was taking a 50’ “ Spirit of Ramfish IV”, a Dutch owned steel yacht, from Perth (Fremantle , Australia) to Singapore. Lucky to have Southern winds , we out sailed them with spinnaker . even more luckier for us , their transport was a canoe with outboard engine.They did manage some holes in the stern but even the spinnaker was untouched"
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