INDIA ESTABLISHES A LISTENING
POST IN MADAGSCAR 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 through their marine wing ,Sea Tigers 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 the key monitoring station
established in Northern Madagascar with complete radars and surveillance
gear to interprete 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 making it unable to take any action
against them due to those support groups’ presence in the coalition
government at the center in New Delhi.
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 maneuvers by the navy in the region,’ a ministry
official said.”
The Indian defence web further said, another aim of the listening post
is to counter the growing Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean Region.
The station is India’s first in 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
US permanent military base with aerial assets and monitoring facilities
in Diego Garcia, 1,400 nautical miles north-east of the Madagascar facility.
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.
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 that finally killed Rajiv
Gandhi. But the US did not want to help Sri lanka when the country was
being attacked by the LTTE not to antogonize India. India concluded
the Voice of America relay station was actually a listening post on
India.
The most famous case of LTTE piracy is 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, 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."
Before the Farah incident the Sea Tigers of the LTTE has been continuously
been engaged in sea piracy with South Indian groups supporting it and
New Delhi doing nothing about them.
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 while the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister
M.Karunanidhi accusing 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.
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