Chapter 3: The Fall And The Rise - Modern Piracy
Submitted by Hannah on Mon, 07/23/2007 - 11:30
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During World War I and World War II naval vessels patrolled waters, even the most isolated ones, which clamped down on pirates. But as I wrote in the introduction; Piracy never disappeared, but it received very little media coverage. I got surprised when I found a news-article on a Swedish website that a ship had been attacked by pirates this year! So I decided to take a deeper look into modern piracy:
Figures from 1998:
"15 merchant vessels hijacked by pirates
138 merchant vessels boarded by pirates
11 merchant vessels fired upon by pirates
35 merchant crewmembers badly injured
Over 400 merchant crewmembers taken hostage by pirates
Over 75 merchant crewmembers murdered in cold blood"
Pirates nowadays seem to have become more sophisticated - and ruthless. There are evidence that criminal gangs have arranged some attacks where the targeted ships has carried valuable cargoes, so no attacking randomly as seen to be the case some years ago. Piracy is often called a "movable crime" since the pirates finds new hot spots, while other locations return to relative peace.
"If piracy were a stock, it would have traded well above Microsoft on world exchanges for the year 2000".
