September 11, 2012 | The Hindu
If
Tamil Nadu politicians truly care about Sri Lankan Tamils, they should
discourage the State’s fishermen from cornering the marine resources in the
Palk Straits
When
Tamil Nadu politicians raise the pitch against the Sri Lankan government’s
perceived atrocities on the Tamils in that country, they invoke popular
sentiment in Tamil Nadu, saying Tamils here are hurt and angry at the way their
brethren across the Palk Straits are being treated.
But
that sympathy is nowhere evident on an issue that truly hits the Sri Lankan
Tamils where it matters — their livelihoods. In fact, it is an issue on which
Tamil Nadu actively works against the interests of fellow Tamils across the
Palk Straits.
For
the last three years, Sri Lanka’s Tamils have been trying to pick up the broken
pieces of their lives, shattered by a long and brutal war. One of the main
livelihoods of people in Northern Sri Lanka is fishing. As people have gone
back to their homes, this is what they have expected to do to earn a living —
go out in a boat and come back home with a decent catch.
By
itself, that does not sound like a big deal. But as the Sri Lankan government
waged a long and hard war against the LTTE, the waters off Northern Sri Lanka’s
coastline were barred to the fishermen of the area.
The
waters were declared high security zones and fishermen could put out only a
kilometre into the sea in the entire North and East; ditto on the north-western
coast, from Mannar upward, while the catch frolicked in the waters beyond.
New
enemy
Now
those restrictions no longer exist. The Sri Lankan Navy is no longer the
villain it was in the war years. But Sri Lankan fishermen in the North find
they have a new enemy. It’s the hundreds of boats that put out to sea from the
Indian side daily, sailing into Sri Lankan waters as if they belong there.
As
Antony Pillai, head of the Jaffna fishermen’s union, told The Hindu’s
Sri Lanka correspondent R.K. Radhakrishnan last month: “They come in large
numbers; it’s as if a huge island is moving”.
Bad
fishing practices have depleted the catch on the Indian side; all the Indian
fishermen want is to get to where the catch now is. Tamil Nadu fishermen
organisers, such as U. Arulanandan in Rameswaram, flatly say it is “not
possible” to restrict themselves to Indian territorial waters as the marine
wealth, and the area on the Indian side, are limited.
Decades
of war ensured that at least the marine resources in Sri Lanka’s northern seas
were protected, if not lives on land. The International Maritime Boundary Line,
for the Indian fishermen, is drawn on water. In Tamil Nadu, all the stress is
on the fishermen’s “traditional areas/waters”. The State is still sore that
there was no consultation with it before the “imposition of an artificial
boundary” in the Palk Straits, and before India ceded Kachchatheevu to Sri
Lanka.
But
Tamil Nadu fails to see that Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen too have the right to a
livelihood.
An
agreement between India and Sri Lanka in October 2008 — when Sri Lanka was
still in the midst of its war against the LTTE — virtually gave carte
blanche to Indian fishermen to cross the IMBL, and venture into Sri Lankan
waters except for “sensitive areas” along the Sri Lankan coast, designated by
that country’s navy.
Sri
Lanka also gave the commitment that there would be “no firing” on Indian
vessels; the Tamil Nadu fishermen had to carry valid identity cards issued by
the State government.
Only
after the war ended did the full impact of this agreement sink in for the Sri
Lankan side. Equipped with powerful mechanised boats rigged for sea-bed
trawling, Tamil Nadu fishermen have had no qualms about aggrandising the resources
on Sri Lanka’s side of the sea. The Sri Lankan fishermen can only watch
helplessly as the Indian boats rip their nets, and speed away with the catch,
leaving behind a muddied sea in their wake.
The
authorities on both sides monitor how many boats cross the IMBL every night.
Records for January to June 2012, obtained from Indian government sources, are
revealing. In January, 5,166 trawlers were seen crossing the boundary; in
February, the number was 6,376; in March, it was 4,740; in April, it came down
to 1,050; in May, it dipped to 304; in June, it rose again to 3,026. Checking
the identity of each boat is impossible. Every month, 10 per cent or less are
recorded as “positively identified”.
The
waters where these boats were found fishing? Forget Kachchatheevu, where Indian
fishermen claim fishing rights — they were seen even as far away as Pulmoddai
and Mullaithivu in eastern Sri Lanka; Chundikulum, Point Pedro and
Kankesanthurai; in the islets around Delft Island off the peninsula; and, all
the way down to Mannar.
On
August 20, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa asked the Centre to take up
“strongly” the issue of attacks on Indian fishermen, saying the Sri Lankan Navy
had been “emboldened” by India’s “soft handling” of the issue. Between June
2011 and August 2012, she wrote 12 letters to the Prime Minister on this issue.
Direct
action
Tamil
Nadu fishermen allege the Sri Lankan Navy beats them up, humiliates them, even
foists smuggling cases on them. But so fraught have relations become between
the fishermen of northern Sri Lanka and the ones from Tamil Nadu that the Sri
Lankans are quite happy when their Navy takes on the Indians. In one incident
in February 2011, Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen resorted to direct action,
rounding up more than 100 Indian fishermen, and handed them over to their navy.
Over
the last two years, Sri Lanka has stressed that the Indian fishermen must
respect the IMBL, most recently at a meeting of the joint working group on
fisheries held in Colombo in August.
Should
the Tamil Nadu government really wish to help Sri Lankan Tamils, there are
several constructive ways of doing so. Sending back school children and
cultural groups is not one of them. In fact, nothing is worse than raising the
temperature for visiting Sri Lankans in Tamil Nadu. The links between the two
sides run too deep and too strong, and destroying them serves no purpose. Think
of the petty Tamil traders from Colombo who travel to Chennai daily, and how
the new negatively charged atmosphere affects them. Think also of the Indians
who have made Sri Lanka their home, live, work and have invested in that
country over the four or five decades, their numbers increasing since the
1990s, and it should become clear that such brinkmanship serves no purpose.
Protesting
the “training” of Sri Lankan officers at Wellington or NDC is certainly not
constructive either. If anything, having them here is an opportunity to give
them a first-hand experience of how a federal system in a multi-ethnic country
works, with all its pulls and pressures.
But
what can be truly constructive, and with an immediate positive impact on the
lives of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils living in Jaffna is if Tamil Nadu can
restrain its fishermen from plundering the Palk Straits with their bad
practices, and from cornering all its resources. Tamil Nadu politicians, if
they truly care about Sri Lankan Tamils, should encourage the State’s fishermen
to see the fishermen on the other side of the straits as partners with their
own rights to the marine resources of the region. Some fishermen know
co-operation is the way forward.
As
far back as 1985, according to Mr. Arulanandan, Rameswaram fishermen submitted
a proposal for developing alternate areas for deep sea fishing. Others, such as
N.J Bose, another fishermen’s leader, have suggested a bilateral agreement that
will enable fishermen from both sides to fish in each other’s waters. Instead
of resorting to damaging rhetoric aimed more at maximising their political
mileage, Tamil Nadu politicians should take the lead in encouraging such
options by which fishermen on both sides can share these resources.
