This January, the Indonesian Navy has permanently stationed six
battleships in the Malacca Straits, three of them off the coast of
the secessionist region of Aceh. A further 20-30 ships and 10
aircraft conduct daily patrols of the treacherous traffic lane. Some
200-600 ships cross the Straits daily. A mere 50 ships or so are
boarded and searched every month.
The Greek government has gunboats patrolling the 2 miles wide Corfu
Channel, where yachts frequently fall prey to Albanian pirates.
Brazil has imposed an unpopular anti-piracy inspection fee on
berthing vessels and used the proceeds to finance a SWAT team to
protect ships and their crews while in port. Both India and Thailand
have similar units.
International cooperation is also on the rise. About one third of
the world's shipping traffic goes through the South China Sea. A
conference convened by Japan in March 2000 - Japanese vessels have
become favored targets of piracy in the last few years - pushed for
the ratification of the International Maritime Organisation's (IMO)
1988 Rome Convention on the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the
Safety of Maritime Navigation by Asian and ASEAN countries.
The Convention makes piracy an extraterritorial crime and, thus,
removes the thorny issue of jurisdiction in cases of piracy carried
in another country's territorial waters or out on the high seas.
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