Mei Chi Wong and Tsz Leung Yip of The Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity, in Kowloon, explain how maritime piracy is now high onthe merchant shipping agenda as incidents become increasinglyfrequent across the globe. The team has analysed data for theperiod 2002 to 2009 from the ICC International Maritime Bureau toassess the type of criminal action that takes place, whetherhijacking for ransom or direct theft and to report on the approachtaken by the pirates in terms of arms and violence. As such,writing in the International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics they offer some suggestions to the authorities and to commercialshipping concerns. "In general, merchant ships are not designed or equipped tofend off pirates' attacks and thus they are susceptible to pirateactivities including boarding, hostage-taking, and stealingcargo," the team says. They add that valuable cargoes,including gas, oil, rice, and fishing products are commonlytargeted, but whole vessels might also be hijacked and held toransom. Kidnapping by maritime pirates is also on the rise. Theteam has studied piracy in the context of safety rather than interms of goods or vessels stolen and used statistical analysis tocategorise and codify hundreds of attacks. The team showed that bulk carriers, general cargo ships,containerships, chemical tankers, and tankers were the mosttargeted vessels, accounting for more than three-quarters of allships attacked during 2002-2009. In terms of violence, attacks categorised as low-level or noviolence, usually involve largely untrained pirates with simpleweapons attacked berthed or anchored vessels and stealing goods orsupplies. Medium-level violence usually involves threats, assaultand sometimes hostage-taking. In major violent piracy, people areattacked and/or kidnapped. In most cases, these types of attack arecarried out while a vessel is at sea. Lives are often lost in suchattacks and the pirates themselves are commonly well armed andorganised. The team has found that the type of attack does notgenerally correlate with the flag being flown by the vessel.However, statistically, most attacks occur within territorial seasand involve low-level attacks in South Asia (around the MalaccaStrait) and Africa (around the Gulf of Aden). As such, the team discusses options for avoiding attack involvingalternative shipping routes and the use of armed guards on merchantvessels. Their analysis should provide shipping companies, policymakers, and other stakeholders with the necessary information toquantify the risk of piracy and the degree of violence and so putin place measures to ameliorate this risk for any particularvessel, cargo, or location. "The paper describes the incident chain of piracy attacks andfurther provides statistical evidence that the relationship ofpiracy outcome (attack success and violence used) and some causes-- e.g. larger vessels are safer against piracy attacks but, ifattacked successfully, the violence level tends to be higher,"says Yip. It also shows that the current measures used byindividual ships against piracy attacks have reduced the attacks oflow-level violence only. More international condemnation isrequired for major violence piracy attacks.". I am an expert from fiber-opticcomponents.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Fiber Optic Splice Closure Manufacturer , Fiber Optic Patch Cord Manufacturer, Fiber Optic Components,and more.
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