Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Somali Pirates : UN Counter-Attack


Gulf of Aden



Somalia


The Malaysian Insider carries an AP report that UN has given the go-ahead to conduct counter-attacks on the Somali pirates:

[On the same day Somali gunmen seized two more ships, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to authorize nations to conduct land and air attacks on pirate bases on the coast of the Horn of Africa country.

Somalia Foreign Minister Ali Ahmed Jama, whose government asked for the help, said he was "heartened" by the council action. "These acts of piracy are categorically unacceptable and should be put to an end," he said.

Pirates have hijacked more than 40 vessels off Somalia's 1,880-mile coastline this year. Before the latest seizures, maritime officials said 14 vessels remained in pirate hands - including a Saudi tanker carrying $100 million worth of crude oil and a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other heavy weapons. Also held are more than 250 crew members.

He Yafei, China's vice minister for foreign affairs, told the Security Council that China is considering sending warships to the Gulf of Aden, where they would join ships from the US, Russia, Denmark, Italy and other countries

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Vienna, Austria-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said Tuesday that it is important for nations to jointly confront pirates.

"Regional cooperation is essential," Costa said. "A few years ago, piracy was a threat to the Straits of Malacca (in Southeast Asia). By working together, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand managed to cut the number of attacks by more than half since 2004."]

Piracy is supposed to be a thing of the past. It is supposed to be the "misadventure" shown in movies purely for entertainment. Let us hope this curse is eradicated once and for all. Or am I just dreaming?

(For my related post, click : "Pirates : Gulf of Aden")

7 comments:

bow said...

Justin, piracy is no adventure, it is a sea version of highway robbery!!!Pirates are getting rich with ransom in million of dollar, it is highly profitable than any profession they can find in Africa.
The situation is out of control in international water,now it is not only piracy, but murder too. UN has to act swiftly to kill them all before they take over all international water like leaches, then it will be too late. UN need to show them who is the BOSS !!!

Anonymous said...

Actually it is no more piracy around gulf of Aden and in our international water, they are consider as kidnappers cum murderers, many of them had been embolden by UN lack of action and inability to put a stop on their activities in high sea. They even boosted loud no one have the fire power to fight them off, except making noises.

monsterball said...

Nothing new.....nothing surprising...as trully real most educated ..best in the world PIRATES are right here in Malaysia.
The irony is ....they are such smart PIRATES....do know how to win hearts by bribing too!!
So successful are they....these PIRATES...can steal from those victims...yet those victims are so happy. CAN YOU BEAT THIS SYSTEM???
It takes more than 25 years to wake those up...as sons and daughters of these idiots....are well educated and they woke.. up their parents and relatives...about the PIRATES....sly fox methods.
So PIRATES got reformed...so lots of Bills are being passed these days...by these reformed PIRATES...who must have got Allah telling them....or to hell or paradise.....they choose.
End of Malaysian PIRATE story.

bow said...

Justin, is your blogger buddy "might of the pen" a pro-umno dude? my several comments are deleted because they contained too much "truth" about Malaysia's politic.

I am just follow your request to drop my 2 cents in that blog, but the owner does not practice "freedom of speech" for every Malaysian.

Justin Choo said...

bow,

This is news to me. According to them they deleted only a handful so far.

I don't know them. I just came across their blog while surfing the net, and found them to be very very very daring and provoking.

They even got J. D. Lovrenciear in their panel. JD has been a regular writer in the newspapers' "readers column" for years. Read my comments #2 & #3 there:

http://sjsandteam.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/fuel-price-reduction-zero-enforcement-escalating-living-costs/


You can email me to discuss this topic.

bow said...

As far as UN is concerned, it is becoming a toothless and spineless world organization, too afraid to act against piracy on international water, terrorism from Osama, and muscle flexing of Iranian president over his nuclear weapon program. It normally acted only after thing getting out of control like the case of East Timor pre-independence slaughtered by Indonesian terrorists.

bow said...

Few years ago,sea lane along strait of Malacca and South China Sea are also full of piracy, but after the bigger pirate from Malaysia intervene, those kampong pirates using "sampan" quickly disappeared and were recruited into a bigger pirate organization in umno lead BN.

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails