140
small boats, weak states, dirty money
a pre-arranged deal at well below the market price, was due to be unloaded.
While in the harbour it was identified by the IMB which proved the ship had
been stolen. Nonetheless, the Chinese authorities allowed the pirate crew to
slip away, impounded the cargo, demanded a “docking fee” of $350,000
for the ship’s release and then eventually sold the cargo themselves without
compensating the rightful owners.
26
In the end the Anna Sierra was never
released and remains in the harbour at Beihai, little more than a rusting
hulk.
27
Jayant Abyankar asked the pertinent question, “Is the…Anna Sierra case
the result of inefficiency and infighting amongst the seemingly inept Chi-
nese authorities concerned, or part of a deeper plot to cover up China’s
participation in criminal activity?”
28
In fact both factors were probably in-
volved. Ken Blyth was the Australian master of another ship, the Petro
Ranger, which was hijacked in 1998. In his case the Chinese Marine police
became suspicious, boarded his ship and arrested his hijackers.
29
eir in-
tervention might well have saved his life. Nonetheless he recognised, after
sitting through numerous interviews, that the various parts of the Chinese
government were in conflict. e attitude of the people’s Liberation Army
(pLA) and the Marine police was that the incident could embarrass China
and therefore the pirates who had taken his ship should be punished. e
people’s Security Bureau (pSB) appeared to be under the control—or in-
fluence—of the local authorities which almost certainly had links to, and
benefited from, the pirates’ activities.
30
As if to confirm this ambiguous po-
26 NGA ASAM 1995-123, 13 Aug. 1995. Dubner ‘human Rights and Envi-
ronmental Disaster’, p. 7. Five further descriptions of this case are to be found
in Seth Faison, ‘pirates, with speedboats, reign in China Sea port’, New York
Times, 20 April 1997; John Grissim, ‘e hijacking of the Anna Sierra’, e
World Paper, May 1997; Abhyankar, ‘Maritime fraud and piracy’, pp. 187-92;
IMB, ‘piracy and armed robbery against ships: A special report’, pp. 33-9 and
Mark Bruyneel, ‘Tale of a modern pirate gang’, 21 Nov. 2000.
27 Jack hitt, ‘Bandits in the global shipping lanes’, e New York Times Magazine,
20 Aug. 2000.
28 Jayant Abhyankar, ‘e case of the Anna Sierra’ in Ellen, Shipping at Risk, p.
279.
29 Ken Blyth (with peter Corris), Petro Pirates: e Hijacking of the Petro Rang-
er’, St Leonards, NSW: Allan & unwin, 2000, pp. 54-5. Also NGA ASAM
1998-33, 17 April 1998 and Charles Glass, ‘e new piracy’, London Review of
Books, vol. 25, no. 24, 18 Dec. 2003.
30 Blyth, Petro Pirates, particularly pp. 71-8 & 104. herman, the pirate leader,
also suggested that the crews of the two vessels that came alongside the Petro
Ranger to remove its cargo were manned by Chinese naval personnel, although