INTRODUCTION

On 23 February 2000 the Japanese-owned tanker MT Global Mars was attacked in the Malacca Strait by a gang of twenty pirates, who approached the tanker in a fishing vessel and climbed on board unnoticed. Once on board, the pirates, masked and armed with guns and knives, overpowered the eighteen-man crew and took control of the vessel. The following day, the crew was transferred to the fishing boat and held on board, while the pirates repainted the tanker, renamed it Bulawan, and replaced its Panamanian flag with the colours of Honduras. After the change of identity was completed, the pirates sailed the Bulawan to an unidentified port where the cargo was sold. After thirteen days of captivity, the crew was moved to a smaller fishing boat and set adrift. After days at sea, the crew reached the island of Surin in Thailand, and called for help. The search for the crew and vessel had, however, already begun. The IMB had been notified of the attack shortly after the hijacking and a reward was offered for information regarding the location of the vessel. The Bulawan was eventually found in Chinese waters and the local authorities, acting on information from the IMB, seized the ship and arrested the “crew” on board on 30 May. The detained crew, eleven Filipinos and nine Burmese, denied they were pirates, claiming instead to be seamen hired to sail the Bulawan to South Korea. They were released a short time later.

Pirate attacks occurring in Southeast Asia and Bangladesh at present range from hijackings of vessels, such as the Global Mars, to simple hitand- run robberies conducted by opportunistic thieves. This chapter offers an overview of pirate attacks on merchant vessels in Southeast Asia and Bangladesh from the early 1980s to 2006, with particular emphasis on attacks occurring after 1992.