Palk Bay fishing dispute | Casting the net in a sea of conflict
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Four fishermen from Ramanathapuram district are the newest casualties in the decades-old Palk Bay fisheries conflict between India and Sri Lanka. L. Srikrishna, C. Jaisankar, R. Rajaram and Meera Srinivasan report on the human price of the concern concerning bilateral ties, livelihoods, and ecological issues
Samson Darwin was a toddler when his household fled their house in Jaffna in the Nineties, to flee the civil warfare that was tearing aside Sri Lanka’s north and east. Mandapam camp in Ramanathapuram turned their “home”. Away from incessant bombing and destruction, they thought that they had one other likelihood at life.
Last week, 28-year-old Darwin’s physique was introduced again house after he and three different fishermen died in the Palk Strait, in Sri Lankan waters. Darwin’s spouse (they received married simply a yr in the past) had given beginning to their first baby weeks earlier than that, and simply as their new life as a household was about to start, his life ended.
Darwin fled the civil warfare almost 25 years in the past however the adversity that started chasing him then got here a full circle that deadly night time. “After escaping the battle in Sri Lanka, we came here [Ramanathapuram]… but Darwin died in the hands of the Sri Lankan Navy,” a relative says, requesting anonymity. He echoes the grief that pervades their village following the tragic loss of life of Darwin, together with A. Mesiya (30), V. Nagaraj (52) and S. Senthil Kumar (32), all hailing from Ramanathapuram, on the night time of January 18.
Outraged by the incident, Tamil Nadu fishermen have accused the Sri Lankan Navy, which was patrolling the seas for “poaching” fishing trawlers, of killing the 4 males. The Sri Lankan Navy, on the different hand, maintains that the fishermen and their boat “sank” whereas “resisting arrest” by a Navy vessel.
The Indian authorities conveyed its “strong protest” to Sri Lanka, and insisted it undertake a humanitarian method in coping with fishermen. Sri Lanka’s Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda, a Tamil from Jaffna, arrange a three-member committee tasked with discovering a “permanent solution” to the Palk Bay fisheries conflict, affecting fishermen of Tamil Nadu and northern Sri Lanka.
None of the official statements mentions a probe being sought or agreed to. The 4 Tamil Nadu fishermen and the Sri Lankan Naval personnel alone have been witnesses to what occurred late that night time, mid-sea, and just one facet is alive to inform their story.
An extended-festering downside
“What wrong did my brother do? He was unarmed and he has been brutally killed,” says A. Simon, Mesiya’s older brother, in his thatch-roofed hut in Thangachimadam, a predominantly fishing village in Ramanathapuram. “Whenever we set out fishing we pray that we return home safely, irrespective of whether the catch is good or not. The innocent fishermen’s end is horrifying.”
That too at sea, to which their lives are so intimately tied. Fisherfolk get up to the sound of the sea, head to the waters for a dwelling, come again to the shore, catch some sleep at odd hours, once more with the reassuring sound of the waves. “After fishing for about 30 hours, we return to the shore. On many days, the Sri Lankan Navy, under the pretext of surveillance, chases us. Sometimes they throw stones at our boats or hurl empty liquor bottles,” says one other fisherman mourning Mesiya’s loss of life.
Fishermen’s representatives in Tamil Nadu accuse the Sri Lankan Navy of injuring a whole lot of fishermen over the years. “About 300 of our fishermen have died in the Palk Strait,” says P. Sesu Raja, Rameswaram-based chief of a fishermen’s affiliation engaged principally in backside trawling. The Sri Lankan Navy has persistently denied the mounting allegations — by means of the years of the warfare and because it ended in 2009.
While the trigger of loss of life of the deceased fishermen has by no means been established in a court docket of regulation, the undeniable fact that these younger fishermen died at sea stays a grim reminder of the human price of the Palk Bay fisheries conflict. Their distressing loss of life, once they have been out at sea to earn a day’s dwelling, is one more stark reflection of a long-festering downside — of depleting marine assets in the Palk Bay, competing livelihoods of fishermen, and a answer that is still elusive, as the fishermen on each side are unable to agree on it.
Tamil Nadu fishermen will not be a homogenous group with the identical pursuits. They are half of a complicated ecosystem of moneyed and infrequently politically influential house owners of trawler fleets who interact different fishermen; of those that practise conventional fishing in their small, mechanised boats; and hundreds of poor fishermen who’ve solely their labour to promote in order to outlive. Depending on who you ask, a completely different side of the downside involves gentle.
Like Sesu Raja, most house owners of the 5,000-plus registered trawlers say that the Sri Lankan Navy “attacked our fishermen”, arrested them, or seized their vessels.
Daily wage fishermen converse of the monumental strain on them to danger their lives and go so far as it takes to get a first rate catch that will guarantee a day’s earnings in full.
Arockia Sesu, 47, from Thangachimadam, who has been fishing for 29 years, says he makes about ₹700 on a good day. With a household of 5, together with his aged mom and two kids, making each ends meet isn’t any straightforward job. “Earlier, it was just poverty which we had to battle. But in recent years, we also have to safeguard ourselves from the Sri Lankan Navy’s aggression,” he says.
Straying in worldwide waters
Despite the GPS items connected to their boats, the fishermen usually stray into Sri Lanka’s territorial waters, throughout the International Maritime Boundary Line, mutually agreed upon by the neighbouring nations in the mid-Nineteen Seventies.
India embraced mechanised fishing utilizing backside trawlers, after its fishing fleet was “modernised” between the Fifties and the early Nineteen Seventies, with hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from the Norwegian authorities.
In the fishing technique of backside trawling, fishermen drag massive nets from the vessels by means of the sea, nearly scooping out younger fishes, shrimps and different organisms from the seabed indiscriminately. Some use thangoosi valai or monofilament nets, extensively thought-about dangerous for marine species.
The catch, utilizing these strategies, has proved considerably larger, boosting the State’s exports. Data from the Fisheries Department present that Tamil Nadu exports about 1.28 lakh tonnes of sea meals, amounting to ₹5,591 crore.
For the export-oriented governments at the Centre and State, and profit-driven house owners of trawlers, the follow progressively turned an dependancy regardless of the severe environmental implications alongside the Tamil Nadu coast, periodically highlighted by scientists.
Small-scale fishermen, too, bear the brunt. In Pudukkottai district, additional up the coast, small-scale fishermen spoke of how the trawlers have struck a enormous blow to their livelihoods. “They [trawlers] return with huge catches thus depleting the marine resources and depriving the smaller mechanised boat fishermen of Pudukkottai district of good catch,” stated B. Balamurugan, president of the Mechanised Boats Association in Jagadapattinam, from the place over 200 mechanised boats utilizing conventional fishing practices function.
The trawlers will not be simply at the centre of a world conflict however have additionally bred native conflicts, factors out Chinna Adaikkalam, President of the Kottaipattinam Mechanised Boat Owners Association. “The longer-sized and higher capacity Karaikal trawlers have resorted to long durations of fishing, for almost 15 days, leaving hardly anything for us in our seas,” he says.
Intuitively chasing fish, Tamil Nadu fishermen employed in the bigger, mechanised trawlers commonly veer into Sri Lankan waters. The ecological harm is relatively much less on the Sri Lankan facet as a result of most Sri Lankan fishermen don’t interact in backside trawling. It is the prospect of a larger catch that pushes Tamil Nadu fishermen to danger encountering arrest by the Sri Lankan Navy or worse, loss of life.
Strained livelihoods and ties
Over time, Sri Lankan fishermen grew extra vocal about the opposed results of backside trawling alongside their shoreline. Their catches fell, and livelihoods have been threatened.
Fishermen on each side converse of a time once they shared cordial ties. “We would call each other machaan and maapilai [brother-in-law and son-in-law]. We would share our porridge, karuvaadu [dried fish] and beedis. They would give us cigarettes and biscuits,” Sesu Raja recollects. Sri Lankan fishermen too reminisce about a time once they took an in a single day boat journey to catch the newest M.G. Ramachandran movie in Rameswaram and return the following day.
But the Sri Lankan civil warfare and the rising use of mechanised backside trawlers in India have strained their ties. For a good half of the almost three-decade civil warfare, fishermen in the northern Jaffna peninsula and the Vanni have been barred entry to the sea, as the Sri Lankan Navy, together with the armed forces, was taking over the LTTE.
It is when the warfare ended in 2009 that the fisherfolk, most of them displaced in the years of strife, returned to their houses, and progressively started to rebuild their misplaced livelihoods. However, their return to sea was removed from easy: they discovered their catch dwindling after Indian trawlers ravaged their seas at the least thrice a week, and their nets, usually purchased with enormous loans, getting caught and broken beneath the trawlers.
Fishermen hoist black flags on their boats as a mark of protest following the loss of life of 4 fishermen in Palk Strait.
| Photo Credit: L. Balachandar
The Sri Lankan Navy stepped up surveillance, arresting fishermen and seizing trawlers “trespassing” into Sri Lankan waters. Since 2010, greater than 3,000 Indian fishermen, all from Tamil Nadu, have been arrested by the Navy. As of right this moment, 12 fishermen and greater than 60 trawlers are in Sri Lankan custody. The concern has remained a delicate bilateral concern, however the Central, State and provincial governments in India and Sri Lanka have achieved little success, moreover “paying lip service”, fishermen be aware with mistrust.
Sri Lanka banned backside trawling in 2017, and in 2018, imposed massive fines on overseas vessels fishing illegally in its waters. While arrested fishermen have been launched periodically, at occasions after a appreciable diplomatic push by New Delhi, the 60-odd trawlers seized since stay in custody. Their house owners in India are but to return to Sri Lanka, to look in court docket and pay the high-quality, earlier than reclaiming the vessels, say officers in Sri Lanka’s Fisheries Department.
Options tried and examined
Talks at the governmental stage, in addition to amongst fishermen, haven’t resulted in a sturdy answer. With heightened surveillance and elevated arrests making information in late 2020, India and Sri Lanka resumed bilateral talks, after a three-year hole, in December 2020, by means of a Joint Working Group with senior officers from each side.
Apart from government-level talks, fishermen leaders from each nations have held discussions a number of occasions since 2004. They met at the least six occasions between 2010 and 2015 – in each India and Sri Lanka – when the Palk Bay conflict intensified. Tamil Nadu fishermen couldn’t hold their promise of “phasing out” trawlers, and likewise refused to conform to Sri Lankan fishermen’s demand that backside trawling be absolutely stopped as a goodwill gesture. Talks stay deadlocked since.
“It is not possible to find a solution to the five-decades-old vexatious issue in two or three sittings. No follow-up action has been taken to resume talks for so long. Governments are receptive and react only when fishermen are killed or arrested in Sri Lankan waters,” says U. Arulanandam, Tamil Nadu’s consultant of the Alliance for the Release of Innocent Fishermen, a long-time activist primarily based in Pamban, Ramanathapuram.
While a part of fishermen in Pudukkottai and Ramanathapuram districts is for restarting talks, fisher leaders in Sri Lanka stay sceptical. “We are really pained by the recent death of Indian fishermen. We are all fishermen first, only then Indian or Sri Lankan. We fully understand their suffering, we are in solidarity with them and want to put an end to this,” says K. Rajachandran, who leads a fisher cooperative in Karainagar, a small island off the Jaffna peninsula.
At the identical time, he requires extra sincerity in attempting to give you a answer. “I have been for several rounds of these talks. Despite many assurances to phase out trawlers, they continued coming in trawlers very close to our shore. If they agree to use small boats and traditional fishing methods, we are more than willing to come to the table to work out an arrangement to share our resources responsibly. That is the only way our future generations can live,” he says, insisting that stopping the use of trawlers be a pre-condition for future talks.
Unlike the state, fisher leaders don’t speak in phrases of invisible boundary traces in the sea, or the regulation that deems their fishing “illegal, unreported and unregulated”. They seem extra inclined in the direction of a humane and sensible association that can handle their short-term issues of securing their livelihoods, in addition to the long-term curiosity of preserving the marine organisms in the Palk Bay.
“The use of bottom trawlers has to be stopped fully. Northern fishermen here, whose livelihoods were devastated by a long-drawn civil war, are frustrated that despite their struggle over many years, the problem of bottom trawling by Tamil Nadu has not ended,” says Ahilan Kadirgamar, senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna, who researches fisherfolk’s livelihoods in Sri Lanka’s war-affected area. “There could be more rounds of talks and a promise of a permanent solution, but how can you really resolve this crisis without addressing the fundamental problem that is bottom trawling,” he asks.
Further, the Indian trawlers have spawned a fleet of comparatively smaller, however nonetheless damaging trawlers in Jaffna, Rajachandran notes with concern. “We don’t oppose trawlers because they are from India. We oppose trawlers from Jaffna [there are some 500] as well. It is the destructive practice we are against, not the fishermen engaging in it.”
Some others like Annalingam Annarasa, chief of the federation of fisher cooperative societies in Jaffna, need to give talks one other likelihood. “Honestly, this is not an issue between two countries, or one between the Tamil Nadu fishermen and the Sri Lankan Navy. It is fundamentally an issue threatening the livelihoods of Tamil fishermen in both India and Sri Lanka. We need to work together with mutual understanding and solidarity,” says Annarasa. “We need to form an alliance with small-scale fishermen in Tamil Nadu and together raise awareness about the dire consequences of bottom trawling. That could be a starting point for talks.”
Solution in sight?
Meanwhile, a challenge of the Indian authorities, geared toward weaning Tamil Nadu fishermen off trawlers and diverting them to deep-sea fishing strategies, took off in 2017, however has hardly progressed as deliberate. Both New Delhi and Tamil Nadu, implementing the ₹1,600 crore initiative, hoped to switch at the least 2,000 trawlers with deep sea fishing boats with lengthy traces and gill nets. However, lower than a tenth of that concentrate on has been achieved, The Hindu reported in December.
According to Johny Tom Varghese, Project Director Palk Bay and Additional Director (Fisheries) in Tamil Nadu, deep sea fishing will ultimately be profitable, although it’s capital-intensive. “A fisherman who invests his money in a deep sea fishing boat can break even in about 18 months. We are training them. We have signed 103 agreements with individuals under the scheme,” he says.
Those grappling with the shift from trawlers to deep sea vessels are additionally confronted with rising prices. In Sesu Raja’s view, the 70% subsidy, collectively from the Centre and State, for the deep sea fishing boats, is inadequate. “The governments had worked out the cost at ₹80 lakh per boat, while it is almost ₹1.20 crore today,” he observes.
Pointing to the scheme’s “very slow progress,” Arulanandam says, “If it is implemented within a year or two, I hope it can offer a possible solution. But the governments should make sure of buying back all existing trawlers.”
The fishermen in Kottaipattinam and Jagadapattinam villages in Pudukkottai too complain that whereas the authorities is taking steps to introduce deep sea fishing, the outdated boats are but to be weeded out. The proposal to shift fishermen of Kottaipattinam, Jagadapattinam and Rameswaram in the direction of deep sea fishing has not picked up, fishermen say.
There haven’t been many takers for fish farming in the Gulf of Mannar, both. The hype following the profitable demonstration of fish farming by the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Mandapam was short-lived. The Fisheries Department seized mechanised boats used for pair trawling on a number of events, however the punitive actions couldn’t eradicate the follow absolutely. The deep divisions amongst numerous fishing teams and frequent agitations have put the brakes on implementing strict rules, in response to fishermen.
As the marketing campaign in election-bound Tamil Nadu picks up, the points of fishermen, who represent a sizeable voters in coastal districts, will take centre stage once more. “The real challenge for fishermen on both sides is to keep this issue in focus even after the polls,” says Annarasa, reflecting a related sentiment heard in Tamil Nadu about “not allowing politicians to exploit our situation.”
At one stage, the downside at hand is historic, complicated and layered. At one other, it’s about sustaining and sharing finite marine assets in the Palk Strait, a slender strip of water, simply over 100 km at its widest, separating south India and northern Sri Lanka. As fishermen repeatedly level out, at the coronary heart of this persisting conflict is their insecurity about their livelihoods and futures. Elections come and go, however that’s but to be decisively addressed.
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