India establishes a listening post to monitor piracy and terrorist
activities of LTTE
(By Walter Jayawardhana)
Amidst growing capabilities of the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) of sea piracy, India has activated its first
listening post on foreign soil that will keep an eye on ship movements
in the Indian Ocean, India's defence web said.
The website said that one of the aims of the key
monitoring station established in Northern Madagascar with complete
radars and surveillance gear to interpret maritime communication is to
monitor "piracy and terrorist activities".
The major pirate group operating in the Indian Ocean
is the Sea Tigers that has been attacking freight ships taking
merchandise from South Indian ports and kidnapping and murdering Indian
fishermen while maintaining powerful support groups in India.
India Defence web site said the Madagascar listening
post in the huge island Republic of Malagasy was quietly operational
earlier this month as part of Indian Navy's strategy of protecting the
county's sea lanes of commerce, that had been openly flouted by the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the past.
The Indian Defence Web reported : " The monitoring
station, under construction since last year when India took on a lease
from Antananarivo, will link up with similar naval facilities in Kochi
and Mumbai to gather intelligence on foreign navies operating in the
region. 'A naval asset with limited anchoring facilities has been
activated. It will facilitate possible manoeuvres by the navy in the
region,' a ministry official said."
The defence web said India is also looking at
developing another monitoring facility at an atoll it has leased from
Mauritius in the near future. "While the ministry remains silent,
sources say some forward movement has recently been made on the
project."
The report said the Indian Navy will effectively box
in the region to protect sea lanes right from Mozambique and the Cape of
Good Hope to the Gulf of Oman with berthing rights in Oman and
monitoring stations in Madagascar, Mauritius ,Kochi, and Mumbai.
The most famous case of LTTE piracy is the plundering
of the Jordanian ship MV Farah 111 that ran aground near Mulaithiuvu,
the LTTE stronghold that was carrying 14,000 tons of Indian rice. The
skipper of the vessel said the Sea Tigers entered the ship and kidnapped
them. Sayed Sulaiman, the chairman of the ship's owners, Salam
International Trading Company gave an interview to the BBC Tamil service
in May 2007, saying," We hear from the parties who are concerned with
the ship, the insurance company etc., that ... everything that could be
taken - like the rice, lights, generators - has been taken from the
ship. The ship is now bare."
The LTTE are reported to hijack ships and boats of all
sizes, and it became common practice for them to kidnap and kill the
crew members on board the hijacked vessels, until they released the crew
of Farah 111 crew.
The LTTE has been accused of hijacking several vessels
in waters outside Sri Lanka including the Irish Mona (in August 1995),
Princess Wave (in August 1996), Athena (in May 1997), Misen (in July
1997), Morong Bong (in July 1997), MV Cordiality (in Sept 1997) and
Princess Kash (in August 1998).
When the LTTE captured the MV Cordiality near the port
of Trincomalee, they killed all five Chinese crew members on board. The
MV Sik Yang, a 2,818-ton Malaysian-flag cargo ship which sailed from
Tuticorin, India on May 25 1999 was reported missing in waters near Sri
Lanka. The ship with a cargo of bagged salt was due at the Malaysian
port of Malacca on May 31. The fate of the ship's crew of 15 is unknown.
It is suspected that the vessel was hijacked by the
LTTE and is now been used as a phantom vessel in the LTTE marine fleet
that also is engaged in drug and gun running all over the world
including some Cocaine producing South American countries. A report
published on June 30 1999 confirmed that the vessel had been hijacked by
the LTTE.
The most recent incidence of sea piracy only weeks ago
by the Sea Tigers was the hijacking of the Indian trawler Sri Krishna in
the high seas to use the vessel for arms smuggling. The vessel was sunk
by the Maldivian authorities while engaged in gun running in their
territorial waters. Earlier some Indian fishermen were also killed by
the Sea Tigers on suspicion that they were spying on their arms
smuggling. |
