Sipadan: Terrorism in ParadisePowered by CYBER DIVER News Network
by FREEMAN WASHINGTON
It's no secret how monthly scuba diving magazines and their online counterparts work. In the world according to diving magazines, every scuba diving resort with an advertising contract is paradise. The more advertising revenue a diving resort area generates, the more "awesome-spectacular-breathtaking" paradise becomes. Nothing, not even paradise, is an absolute. It's very much a work in progress defined by the terms of a multi-issue, multi-banner ad campaign. Page after page of full-color photos and hyperbolic copy are fabricated to leave no doubt in the mind of advertisers that their money is well-spent, that undesirable elements (poverty, crime, environmental degradation) have been edited out, that the props (palm trees, white sand beaches, ocean-front cafes, mantas and dolphins) are all where they should be. Pay your money, join the worldwide dive paradise club! Sipadan Island was a member of the club. Its beauty was extolled. Its dive sites challenged writers to find new superlatives. Its dive operators got the high-5-star rating. The tourists came, the money flowed and everyone in "paradise" was happy. Almost everyone. The locals who were fired from their resort jobs, the fishing community, the pirates, the Muslim rebels, everyone the dive magazines edited out, those who did not get an invitation to join the club were less enthusiastic about the wealthy foreigners who came to play in the water. What the magazines neglected to tell you about Sipadan is that it happens to be located in an extremely impoverished area that is politically unstable and dangerous. They neglected to tell you that Malaysia and Indonesia are locked in a territorial dispute over Sipadan. They neglected to tell you that the area is controlled by pirates who frequently attack coastal towns near Sipadan. They neglected to tell you the pirates are closely linked to Muslim rebels in the area. They neglected to tell you that the pirates operate with the cooperation of local fishers and others who share in the US$100 million annual take (half the world's piracy attacks). They neglected to tell you about previous abductions, extortion and killings. Divers who travel to remote destinations need to know the facts, the positive and the negative, to effectively assess the risks. In 1988, we issued our first Dive Travel Alert after an incident with armed pirates in the Philippines. Since then, we have issued several Dive Travel Alerts for the Philippines and in 1998, we issued a Dive Travel Warning for Sipadan. On April 24, 2000, we issued a full Dive Travel Alert for Sipadan following the rebel attack on the island. As of May 1, 2000, one week after the Sipadan abductions, we are still the only scuba diving publication bringing news and analysis of the kidnappings to the world diving community. It's your dive trip, your money, your life. The decision as to what level of risk you are willing to accept is entirely yours. But with CDNN, CDNN Alert and other exclusive CDNN features, at least you have a reliable and trustworthy online resource for objective information on which you can base informed decisions that reflect the facts, not the hype. © CDNN - CYBER DIVER NEWS NETWORK | 
