piracy today
Piracy this week, maybe.
Here’s some pirates a long way from Somalia:
Pirate attacks on local fishermen are common in the Bay of Bengal. Fishermen and boat owners say authorities don’t do enough to police the waters.
Salamat Ullah, the owner of the missing boat, said he filed a complaint with police.
”We are continuing our regular patrol,” Cox’s Bazar coast guard official Lt. A.K. Chakrabarty said.
Maybe this is a diplomatic broadside, but “piracy” is political hyperbole here:
Meanwhile, the big action is still off Somalia:
- Tanker hijacked by Somali pirates poses environmental risk
- Somali pirates hijack Pakistan-flagged ship
- Somalia: Pirates Release Greece Ship After the Payment of Ransom
- Kenyan courts on legal front line in battle to stop Somali pirates
- Somali Piracy Tribunals Unlikely, Despite Calls
But one key topic raised at discussions, hosted by the International Criminal Law Network, a Hague-based think tank, was whether the International Criminal Court (ICC), also based in The Hague, could expand its jurisdiction to include piracy.
While experts said they expect the ICC — which was set up in 2002 as the world’s first permanent war crimes court — to take up the issue of piracy at its Review Conference in Uganda in May of 2010, they don’t expect an expansion of jurisdiction.
Moreover, countries in the Horn of Africa most affected by piracy — Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea — are not signatories to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC.
Enforcement, however, would be the biggest problem.