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Malacca Strait Pirates
October 2007
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Malacca Strait Pirates
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By Peter Gwin
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In the 1980s Indonesia tried to mimic Singapore’s success and began to transform Batam, one of the Riau islands off Sumatra’s eastern coast, from a malaria-ridden fishing outpost into a tariff-free zone for entrepreneurs. Developers carved golf courses out of jungles and built casinos to lure tourists from Malaysia and Singapore. Investors backed factories and strip malls, office parks and apartment blocks. Indonesians flocked to boomtown Batam to find work. The island became a hub for maritime brokers, who hired sailors for shipping companies.
Batam, however, lacked Singapore’s strict rule of law. Patronage and corruption took hold, and the island quickly became a haven for an exotic assortment of gangsters, smugglers, prostitutes, and pirates. Illegally harvested timber, embezzled diesel fuel, stolen cars, drugs, weapons, and poached animals moved through its ports. Droves of Singaporean men ferried over on weekends to visit the growing number of brothels filled with impoverished girls. Meanwhile, some of the maritime brokers quietly engaged in their own side business: recruiting pirates for Asian crime syndicates. In 1997 the boom went bust when the Asian financial crisis hit. The investment money evaporated from Batam, leaving the island littered with abandoned construction sites. Unemployment rose, driving more people to the black economy. Though in the past couple of years investors had begun returning, the island still harbored a large class of residents who could only be described as desperate.
I asked the cab driver about the coffee shop behind the Harmoni Hotel. It’s in Jodoh, he said, referring to Nagoya’s seediest precinct. “Many murders there. Better you call me and I bring girls to you.”
Phantom Swiftlets
The first sounds one hears during a morning walk through Jodoh’s narrow avenues are the whistles of swiftlets. Even the vendors hawking fruit, secondhand clothing, and used appliances smuggled from Singapore can’t compete with the ebullient birdsong. It is one of Jodoh’s many deceptions: the mating calls are taped and broadcast over loudspeakers to attract real swiftlets to build nests in the empty top floors of numerous buildings. The nests are harvested and each sold for hundreds of dollars to restaurants for bird’s nest soup.
Another deception is the “coffee shop,” a euphemism for the gambling dens where seamen meet brokers, trade gossip, drink beer, and bet a numbers game. However, in the year since Johan Ariffin, née John Palembang, has been in prison, much had changed in Batam. Most notably, Indonesia’s new police chief has cracked down on gambling on the island, much to the detriment of the tourist trade, which relied on the stream of Singaporeans who filled Batam’s resorts. When I arrived at the coffee shop behind the Harmoni, its windows were blacked and the front door was chained. This might have dimmed my hopes for finding John Palembang’s friends had it not been for Jhonny Batam. I’d been given his name—one of his names—by someone he trusted. He was described as a gentleman of opportunity. A ship captain by trade, he had piloted vessels for both legitimate companies and less scrupulous entities. He was said to know every ship in port and every coffee shop deal in Batam. If anyone knew John Palembang, it would be Jhonny Batam.
At first, contacting him was like chasing one of Jodoh’s phantom swiftlets. Calls to his cell phone went unanswered until finally one morning he phoned to say he was stranded on Bangka Island, south of the Malacca Strait. Some “business” had gone badly, and he was broke. I agreed to wire him $80 for a plane ticket back to Batam.
As agreed, Jhonny Batam appeared the next day on a backstreet near a row of butcher shops. Animal blood ran in the gutters beneath the stifling odors of fresh meat. Jhonny, a handsome, bearish man in his 50s, wore an immaculate white sports shirt and pressed slacks, his wavy black hair perfectly coiffed. A fake gold Rolex dangled around his wrist, and he might have passed as a golf pro if not for the tattoos inscribed on his knuckles.
In a nearby restaurant, he said he knew John Palembang, whom he called a low-level seaman. The coffee shop grapevine had laughed at news of the Nepline Delima fiasco. “Amateurs,” Jhonny scoffed. He began to describe his own career, how he had piloted tugboats and a ferry before taking the helm of a small cargo vessel. In time, he built a network of friends among sailors and harbor workers. Along the way he took side jobs, smuggling untaxed garlic, cigarettes, electronics, and drugs. In the 1980s, he relocated to Hong Kong to work for Chinese crime syndicates. There his repertoire broadened to include making large cargoes “disappear.”
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