Excerpts from a report:
By Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan
Washington Post Foreign Service
TOKYO-Pirates with automatic weapons and cell phones have brought a
terrifying sophistication to old-fashioned buccaneering in the shipping lanes of Asia, in some cases even killing entire ships' crews.
East Asia has always had piracy, but the number of cases has increased dramatically in recent years, especially since the region's economy went into a tailspin years ago. Historically, economic or political instability in the Far East has led to violence and thuggery at sea. Last year, 59 cases of piracy -- almost a third of the 192 reported worldwide -- occurred off the coast of Indonesia, the country hit hardest by the Asian economic crisis.
Estimates of financial losses due to acts of piracy around the world have reached as high as $16 billion a year, with the vast majority occurring in Asia, according to the London-based International Maritime Bureau, which maintains a Piracy Reporting Center in Malaysia. In a recent report, the bureau cautioned against "romanticized" views of pirates as Robin Hood figures and "bearded renegades sailing seas of endless blue." The truth, it said, "is that modern day piracy . . . is a violent, bloody, ruthless practice and is made the more fearsome by the knowledge on the part of the victims that they are alone and defenseless."
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