One of my private students is a policeman. But he is no private; he is a Colonel in the Marine Police. As far as I can figure out, his rank is roughly equivalent to that of an admiral in the Coast Guard. His name is Bundit Tungkasernee, and he is a professional Pirate Catcher. Though, he will not admit to that.
We have a text book at our disposal for our two hour lessons but we rarely open it; his English is already very good. Instead, I grill him about his job, and he tells me what he has been up to since I last saw him. He talks, pausing only to ask me for a word he doesn’t know, which I then endeavor to supply. When I provide him with a word or phrase he thinks useful or interesting, he jots it down in a small, black notebook. In this way he expands his work-related English vocabulary, and I learn a lot about the Marine Police.
One of the first things I learned was that there are no pirates in Thailand; he told me this on the first day. That was strange, I replied, as I was sure I had read several articles on piracy in the Bangkok Post. These had usually been short news pieces -- sidebars really -- and true enough, they were usually about pirate attacks in other countries. But often enough the incidents took place in Thailand. "No," he replied firmly. "In Indonesia, Malaysia, yes, there are many pirates. But in Thailand, we have no pirates."
Strange, I thought, that he be so insistent. And yet, I was certain I had read of pirate attacks in Thai waters. I started doing a little research into the subject and found the following on the Heritage Foundation website:
"On March 17, 1999, 20 pirates boarded the cargo ship Marine Master off the west coast of Thailand. The pirates wore army uniforms and masks, and carried automatic weapons. The 16 members of the crew were kidnapped and then set adrift." Just as I had thought: Thailand, pirates.
A far cry from their cutlass-swinging forebears, these latter-day pirates were very real, very modern, and very dangerous. Sabers and flintlocks had been replaced by machine guns and grenade launchers; captured schooners had given way to speedboats and fishing trawlers; but the profession of piracy was very much alive and well in South East Asia. In fact, if anything, incidents appeared to be on the rise. According to the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center website reported attacks against commercial ships had tripled during the 1990’s, increasing by 40 percent in 2000 alone. And in the last five years the problem has only grown worse.
Captain Pottengal Mukundan, Director of the IMB reports: "Following the tsunami of 26 December, there have been at least three violent attacks in these waters. The first attack occurred on 28 February, when a tug towing a barge carrying coal for Lumut Power Station was attacked off the port of Penang. A gang of pirates abducted the captain and chief officer and held them for ransom."
"In the second incident, on 12 March, a fully laden oil tanker en route from Samarinda to Belawan in Indonesia was attacked by 35 armed pirates. The captain and chief engineer were kidnapped and are still missing."
"And at approximately 1830 hours on 14 March, the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre received a report that the Idaten, a Japanese tug, had been attacked roughly 70 miles South West of Penang while towing Kuroshio, a construction barge, from Batam, Indonesia to Myanmar. Armed pirates arrived in three fishing boats, abducted one Filipino and two Japanese crew members and transferred them to one of the fishing boats. The whereabouts of the abductees is still unknown."
The problem is not only growing in S E Asia, it is growing worldwide. The pirate’s realm has expanded to include not only South East Asia and the Indian Subcontinent, but the African coasts and the Red Sea, South and Central American waters, and the Caribbean.
I wanted to know more. I wanted first-hand accounts. Here I had an expert at my fingertips: Colonel Bundit.
I will grill this man about pirates until he cries for mercy, I thought, then flip him over and grill him again. But it was not to be so easy. The Colonel wouldn’t give me jack. He would of course admit to catching the occasional drug smuggler. He had to; his department was responsible for one of the biggest heroin busts in Thai history only last month. It was all over the newspapers. But pirates? In Thailand. No, sir. This he would not concede. "There are no pirates in Thailand," he told me. "We catch them all."
Now, Colonel Bundit is a cultured and educated man. He appreciates music and literature, and plays golf on the weekends. He is proud of his country and has made it a personal goal to visit every Thai town of note before he dies. He is not prone to rudeness. So by his curt and sullen answers, I was given to know that this was not a subject he wanted to talk about, at least not on his dime.
It was as if I was inquiring into the frequency of his herpes flare-ups, or whether he masturbates with his left or right hand. I was the one who was being rude, by bringing up a subject he found embarrassing and uncomfortable to discuss. By implying there may be incidents of piracy in Thailand, I was not only questioning his effectiveness as Chief Pirate Catcher but in the process dragging his country’s good name through the mud.
Imagine my frustration. Here I had an expert on modern piracy at my disposal that invariably went mute on the subject. Whenever I brought it up, he would grow vague and distant, and the humor drained from our conversation like cold bathwater. But his obstinacy on the issue only piqued my curiosity.
I became obsessed with pirates. What a fantastic idea for a book, I thought. Who were these people? What was their story? Was there any truth to the commonly held belief that many of them were descendants of the notorious Sea Gypsies who had plagued these waters since well before the time of the first European incursions into the hemisphere? It was fascinating to think that an entire race of oceangoing bandits had survived -- and not only survived, but actually prospered -- through the 1900’s and into the 21st century.
I was hooked. But if my expert source wouldn’t provide any answers (and the internet surrendered only tantalizing tidbits of information), how was I going to find out more about these ferocious sea villains? I wanted to see them in the flesh, maybe even speak to them. I wanted to hear their stories, in person.
These were not musty, fictional characters. They were living, breathing, and very dangerous criminals: smugglers, extortionists, killers. How could I get the dirt without getting myself murdered in the process? I didn’t know yet, but the questions kept buzzing about my head like flies. I was headed for Calcutta in three days time to start a new job. Calcutta was one of the three great ports on the Indian Ocean. And the Indian Ocean was a hotbed of modern piracy. I didn’t know yet which way the wind would blow. But the story -- I had a feeling -- was just beginning.
Ah, Tod, you can't leave us hanging there... Did you ever find the pirates in Calcutta? Have you run off with them? Have they run off with you? Where do the pirates fit into the urban ecosystem? Are they eaten by the cows? Do they drown with the rats in the monsoon? So many questions I have...
Posted by: ChiaLynn | February 08, 2006 at 04:49 AM