ToTheCenter

September 02 2010 17:01:41

Navigation

· Home
· Discussion Forum
· News Categories
· Staff Page
· Search
· RSS Feeds
· Ultimate Stat Page
· Links
· Contact
· Voice Your Opinion

News Feeds

Welcome

India to Monitor Sea Piracy and Terrorism of LTTE

Advert

By Walter Jayawardhana

Amidst the growing capability of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for sea piracy through their marine wing, Sea Tigers, India has activated its first listening post on foreign soil. It will keep an eye on ship movements in the Indian Ocean, India’s defense web said.

The website said that one of the aims of the 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 group operating in the Indian Ocean is the Sea Tigers. It has been attacking freight ships, taking merchandise from South Indian ports, and kidnapping and murdering Indian fishermen while maintaining powerful support groups in India. Those support groups make it hard to take any action against the Sea Tigers due to their presence in the coalition government at the center in New Delhi.

The India Defense web site said the Madagascar listening post, located in the huge island Republic of Malagasy, was quietly operational earlier this month as part of the Indian Navy’s strategy of protecting the county’s sea lanes. It 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 maneuvers by the navy in the region,’ a ministry official said.”

Another aim for the listening post is to counter the growing Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean Region. The station is India’s first in the southern Indian Ocean that is gaining importance due to increasing oil traffic across the Cape of Good Hope and the Mozambique Channel route preferred by super tankers. India has been attempting to become the hegemonic power in the Indian Ocean, and its sponsorship of the proposal that Indian Ocean should be made a Zone of Peace was a diplomatic ruse to reach that goal.

Some observers feel that India is also attempting to counter the permanent U.S. military base with aerial assets and monitoring facilities in Diego Garcia, 1,400 nautical miles north-east of the Madagascar facility.

The defense 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 Indian Navy will effectively box in the region to protect sea lanes, 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.

During the J. R. Jayewardene government, Sri Lanka’s signing an agreement with Voice of America was made one of the excuses for India to arm fund and train the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which finally killed Rajiv Gandhi. But the U.S. did not want to help Sri Lanka when the country was being attacked by the LTTE because it didn't want to antagonise India. India concluded the Voice of America relay station was actually a listening post on India.

The most famous case of LTTE piracy was the plundering of the Jordanian ship MV Farah 111 that ran aground near Mulativu, 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, 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 was common practice for them to kidnap and kill 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 that 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 used as a phantom vessel in the LTTE marine fleet. A report published on June 30, 1999, confirmed that the vessel had been hijacked by the LTTE. The LTTE is also engaged in drug and gun running all over the world, including some cocaine producing South American countries.

The most recent incidence of piracy by the Sea Tigers was only weeks ago. The Indian trawler Sri Krishna was hijacked on the high seas. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi accused Sri Lanka for the incident. 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.