One man against the pirates / by Clark Norton and Howard Kohn

One man against the pirates / by Clark Norton and Howard Kohn

“For weeks the drunken toughs had terrorized the Vietnamese boat people stranded on a tiny island. Rape, torture, murder—seemingly without end. Now it was up to one young American to stop it,”

            On November 16, 1979, Theodore (Ted) Schweitzer, a new field officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees, was in his office at the Songkhla refugee camp in southern Thailand, a temporary home for thousands of “boat people” who had fled Vietnam. For Schweitzer, a simple, soft-spoken, 37-year-old American overseeing the camp was not an entirely exotic assignment. He had taught English in Bangkok three years earlier, and was married to a Thai woman. Fluent in Thai, he had already battled local authorities to get better conditions for his refugees. But now his job was about to take on a new dimension.

            That morning, Schweitzer was visited by an oil-company helicopter pilot who reported spotting dozens of refugees on Ko Kra, a tiny island 50 kilometres off Thailand’s eastern coast. Schweitzer had never heard of Ko Kra, but with missionary zeal he asked the pilot to fly him over the island. Soon he was looking down on a one and a half-square-kilometre patch of mountain, jungle and coral-flecked beach. Below, tattered refugees waved at him in desperation.

            Schweitzer pleaded with the pilot to land, but the man had spotted pirate boats offshore and bodies floating in the water, and he refused. “I’m not hired to fly combat missions,” he said.

            Back on the coast, Schweitzer persuaded Thai marine police to take him to Ko Kra by launch. Together, they rescued 157 men, women and children.

            Schweizer was aghast at the refugees’ tales of terror: pirates had attacked their boats, robbed them, then they towed them to uninhabited Ko Kra, where the refugees were thrown overboard hundreds of metres from shore. Seventeen had drowned. The rest were marooned with little more than their clothing. Then the real nightmare began. Boatloads of pirates—as many as 50 vessels in a day—repeatedly returned to Ko Kra to rape the refugee women. (For centuries, many Thai and Malay fishermen have doubled as pirates. In the past decade, with a million boat people setting sail from Vietnam in fragile vessels, the piracy has swelled like the tidal waves that also plague these waters.)

            One young woman, Vu Thanh Thuy, a former journalist in Vietnam, begged Schweitzer to do something to stop the pirate attacks. “I promise,” he told her.

            Before leaving Ko Kra, one of the 157 refugees had scratched Schweitzer’s name and UN affiliation on the wall of an abandoned lighthouse. Two weeks later, an old fisherman smuggled a message to Schweitzer: “SOS: we are 17 South Vietnamese refugees, just arrived Ko Kra island. Our lives are in danger and we need immediate help.” On December 3, Schweitzer returned to the island on a police boat and rescued this second group. A month later he rescued another 80 people.

            Piercing screams.

            Then, in mid-january 1980, after sighting more refugees from a helicopter, Schweitzer set off on his fourth rescue mission. It was plague by trouble from the start. The weather was stormy and the Thai police were unwilling to risk the violent north-east monsoon. Schweitzer ended up renting an old fishing boat and its crew for $500 of his own money.

            Alerting the Thai authorities to his plans, Schweitzer and crew set off in the late afternoon on January 14, hoping to reach the island by morning. But the storm tossed seas heaved the boat on six metre swells, driving it in circles. Not until midnight on the second night did they reach Ko Kra, dropping anchor 400 metres offshore to avoid the rocky shallows. Then the captain shut off the engines.

            Suddenly, screams from the island pierced the night. Exhausted from the journey, Schweitzer sat on deck and listened until he could listen no more. I have to do something, he thought. Impulsively, he stripped to his underwear and dived into the water.

            The current was swift, and Schweitzer struggled towards the beach. But instead of getting closer to it, he could see it receding. I’m being swept out to sea!

            Straining desperately towards a rocky outcropping at the far west end of the island—the last piece of land before kilometers of ocean—Schweitzer collided with something in the water. His blood froze as he stared into the face of a dead man. Then a mountainous swell picked Schweitzer up and smashed him against the outcropping. Somehow he grabbed on to a small ledge.

            With waves threatening to wash him back to sea, Schweitzer crawled his way 15 metres up the slippery cliff to a wider ledge. His legs, slashed by the rocks, ran with blood. Shivering, he crouched and waited for daybreak.

            Hellish prison.

            An hour passed like a year. Then he heard voices.

            “Hello!” Schweitzer shouted, pulling himself to his feet. He looked up and saw the smiling faces of two Vietnamese men pop over the edge of the cliff. One cried in English, “Oh, we are saved!” Using a pair of trousers, they hoisted Schweitzer to the top of the cliff, then bandaged his legs with an old skirt. Schweitzer asked about the screams.

            “The robbers are raping the girls,” he was told.

            The men led Schweitzer down the back side of the cliff. In a grassy area by the beach, he saw campfires. Dozens of fierce looking young toughs lay around them in an alcoholic stupor. The pirates ! The Vietnamese told Schweitzer that the pirates had taken their watches, jewellery and other valuables. One old man had his gold-filled teeth wrenched out with pliers and a screwdriver. But what really kept the pirates around was the refugee women. Ko Kra had been turned into a hellish prison of rape and torture.

            Some women had fled to the hills or into the tall elephant grass. But the pirates tortured the men to reveal their hideouts. Once, when the pirates set fire to the elephant grass to smoke out the terrified women, a teenage girl jut let the fire burn over her, not crying out as it scorched her back. But when the elephant grass was gone, the pirates found her and raped her anyway. Now, Schweitzer watched with horror as the pirates raped Vietnamese girls in view of everyone.

            “Where are the other men?” he asked the two Vietnamese.

            “Hiding.”

            “Show me where.”

            An hour later, Schweitzer was at the head of a ragtag band of about 35 half-starved Vietnamese men. Hanging on to one another for support, they advanced towards the pirate campfires.

            At the sight of the foreigner, the pirates cursed and rose on unsteady legs. Speaking Thai, Schweitzer called out that he was from the United Nations. “All these people are under my protection,” he shouted. “ If you leave immediately, I won’t have you arrested.”

            About 50 pirates stood their ground, facing Schweitzer and the refugees. Schweitzer looked grimly at their scarred bodies and rippling muscles. Doggedly, he stepped closer.

            The pirates waved a small arsenal of weapons—guns, hammers, axes, lead pipes—and shouted, “Stand back! Stand back!”

            Schweitzer and his outmatched band halted. If he didn’t act fast, the men behind him might retreat to the bush. I can’t show any sign of weakness, Schweitzer thought. If I do, I’m a dead man.

            “ I am a representative of the United Nations!” he repeated. “ If you kill me, the whole world will hunt you down!”

            The pirates laughed, yet some began to retreat. The sight gave the refugees sudden courage, and several sprang forward, beating the pirates with their bare hands.

            “Don’t! Come back !” Schweitzer yelled. But it was too late.

            The pirates turned and attacked. With one swing of a lead pipe, their leader opened a bloody gash on Schweitzer’s head. Another blow sent him to the ground. In a daze, he felt his side and stomach being kicked in repeatedly. Then he lost consciousness.

            “All must make it.”

            When Schweitzer regained consciousness, it was dawn and the pirates were gone. But he could see their boats lingering off-shore. Knowing that their attackers would return, some of the refugees fell at Schweitzer’s feet, begging to be taken from the island.

            With no time to lose, Schweitzer told the hysterical refugees, “Be quiet! Do exactly as I say!”

            Their first task was to find the women and children who were still hiding. From previous rescue missions, Schweitzer knew of several hideouts, including a rocky cave half-filled with sea water. On his first mission he had found a young woman who had stood waist-deep in water for 18 days. She had had chunks of her flesh eaten away by sea crabs. Seeing her, Schweitzer had broken down and cried. Now he found more women in the cave, some too weak to walk. He carried them on his shoulders down the mountain to the beach.

            “I have a boat standing by,” Schweitzer told the refugees. Dividing them into three groups—men who could swim, men who could not, and women and children—he matched up swimmers and non-swimmers.

            Then began a grueling series of swims out to the rented fishing boat. Human chains were formed: Schweitzer or another man towing a woman, who in turn held a child.

            As Schweitzer placed the first refugees on board, he thought he saw a pirate boat returning. Should I leave with those already on board? No, all must make it?

            A second boat appeared on the horizon. Another pirate ship? Schweitzer took note of its markings: a Thai navy boat. Thank God, we’re going to make it.

            And they did—although their boat ran aground just one and a half kilometers from the mainland and they endured another 12 hours as pirate ships menaced them. But a rising tide finally carried them to shore and safety. Because of Schweitzer’s courageous efforts, 88 more refugees survived the horrors of Ko Kra.

            Sense of accomplishment.

            During his remaining four months at Songkhla, Schweitzer returned to the island another two dozen times, leading an average of one rescue mission per week. In all, he helped save 1,250 refugees. He was beaten up twice, shot at, stabbed, and threatened with murder. Once, a pirate kicked him so hard in the kidneys that red urine spurted uncontrollably down his trousers. His wife, sick with fear, suffered two miscarriages, and their daughter was threatened with kidnapping. Much of the time Schweitzer was forced to act alone, for officials didn’t like to admit the extent of the problem.

            Finally, in May 1980, Schweitzer accepted a transfer, this time an office job in Geneva, Switzerland. His health was wrecked; he awoke every night in a nightmare sweat. Twice he had to undergo emergency kidney operations.

            Still, Schweitzer felt a sense of accomplishment. Besides saving refugees, he had persuaded the UN to invest in life-saving equipment so that others could carry on his work. And he won the “deep gratitude” and “personal admiration” of Poul Hartling, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who presented him with a replica of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the agency in 1981.

            Today, Schweitzer is back in the United States, still determined to do whatever he can to save the boat people from pirates. He has formed his own anti-piracy organization, called the SEA Rescue Foundation. Its goal is to establish a piracy-free zone across the Gulf of Thailand, using helicopters, speedboats and sea planes.

            In 1983 a US-based Vietnamese refugee organization, the Boat People SOS committee, gave Schweitzer its award of merit. Instrumental in bestowing that award were California residents Vu Thanh Thuy, the young journalist Schweitzer rescued on his first mission, and her husband, Duong Phuc, whom Schweitzer had also rescued.

            “We would have died on Ko Kra if not for Mr Schweitzer,” Vu Thanh Thuy says. “We could never thank him enough.”

            And in a city in southern France, a young boy is growing up, born to one of the women rescued by Schweitzer from the watery cave of Ko Kra. She has named him Theodore.

“The big advantage of a book is it’s very easy to rewind. Close it and you’re right back at the beginning.”

                                                                                                                                                -Jerry Sienfield

A tragedy ignored             Pirates continue to roam the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, preying upon the men, women and children who risk their lives in rickety boats to free the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.             In 1985, for instance, 451 boats managed to make it from Vietnam to Thailand or Malaysia. Crammed into these vessels were 10,706 Vietnamese. Nearly a third of the boats had been attacked by pirates, usually more than once. Seventy four passengers had been murdered, 111 kidnapped, 110 raped.             How many boats failed to reached freedom will never be known. What is known is that increasingly the pirates are murdering all passengers after robbing them and often raping the women. In March 1985, for instance, a refugee boat slipped away from Can Tho, Vietname, with 117 passengers aboard, including 36 children under ten. Four days later, it drifted across the path of five pirate vessels. Only one managed to survive.             Though the Thai navy has expanded air and sea patrols, the pirates have an essentially free hand since they operate largely in vast international waters. There are 4,356 documented cases from 1981 through 1986 of murder, kidnapping and rape, but 40 convictions. And the ongoing tragedy is largely ignored by the rest of the world.