Will a fishers’ defence force create more problems than solving any?
By N Sathiya Moorthy
If anything, the recent initiative of fisheries minister Douglas Devananda to create a fishermen’s volunteer force to tackle the fishers’ issue with the Indian neighbour can make it more complicated than already. If taken forward, it can lead to situations that could cause diplomatic heart-burning between the two South Asian neighbours – and may not stop there.
The reasons are not far to seek. The fishermen’s volunteer corps, if envisaged on the lines of the civil defence force on land, against the JVP militancy very long ago and the LTTE in relatively recent times, involved only Sri Lankans on the other side. They were also militant/terror groups, who were targeting civilians alongside the Sri Lankan State structures and leaders. But a fishers’ force of the kind will be targeting foreigners, and if there are attacks or casualties, that will be a different matter altogether.
Worse still, the real issue of Indian poaching may be pushed to the background, if not forgotten, at least for a while. There will be consequences, as whenever negotiations commence, or re-commence, as the Jaffna fishers have indicated to India’s The Hindu newspaper recently, the priorities could have changed. But that is only one of the problems, but there could be many more immediate concerns.
Complex, complicated
First and foremost will be the suspicion that among the civil defence force were Sri Lanka Navy personnel camouflaging as civilian Tamil fishers. It may not hold as any long-time Sri Lanka watcher from India knows that there are very few Tamils serving the navy, and even fewer Sinhala seamen, like their land and air counterparts, know the language. But that is where the argument would stop.
There is an even more complex and complicated possibility. Minister Devananda is on record that during his past meetings with Chinese Embassy officials in Colombo, he had sought their suggestions for solving the fishermen’s issue with India. It is anybody’s guess what suggestion was given or was accepted. It is also not clear if the idea of a fishermen’s volunteer force was born out of those discussions.
The concerns in this context are many. For those who might have forgotten it all, a couple of years back, Chinese ‘fishermen’ began by ramming their ‘fishing vessels’ against those of the Filipinos and a few other nationalities in South-East Asia in the contested South China Sea, over which Beijing has been claiming exclusive territorial rights and ownership. At some point, the ‘Chinese fishing vessels’ also targeted coast guard vessels belonging to these nations.
The motive was clear, yes, but it is anybody’s guess if Chinese fishers, even if highly patriotic, would wantonly damage their own vessels, too, in the act. Considering that it did not involve livelihood issues as much as in the Sri Lankan context, why should the Chinese fishers make a big issue out of it all? After all, it is common knowledge that Chinese fishers, like many others, resort to poaching in the territorial waters of other nations – and get caught at times.
That raises the question as to who all were on those boats, and who owned or funded them. This is so even as we have latest reports of China’s People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) blocking the way of Filipino supplies vessels, and opening water cannons at them. If repeated on the Palk Strait, any or all of these tactics could have consequences that the Sri Lankan Government and the State structure per se may not desire.
In context, the Cabinet decision on Minister Devananda’s proposal will be keenly watched, both inside and outside the country – and not just in India, especially southern Tamil Nadu. If one country can create a civilian fishermen’s defence force, other South Asian nations, and also neighbours in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), too, would be keen to know the kind of powers, weapons and rights and legal protection that its personnel may – or, may not – have in the country of origin.
Violating the IMBL
It is nobody’s case that fishers from the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu and inter-locked Karaikal enclave in Puducherry union territory are violating the IMBL, drawn up by the two national governments as far back as 1964. Even the modifications that were introduced two years later in 1966 did not touch upon the IMBL. Both nations notified what was a uniquely twisted IMBL to the UNCLOS and no government in New Delhi has ever talked about seeking an alteration to the maritime border, or amending the past accords, accordingly.
Yes, there is an issue of bottom-trawlers from India violating the IMBL as frequently as they fish. They also come as close to northern coast of Sri Lanka as possible. The local fishermen, also Tamil-speaking like their Indian brethren, have been complaining – and justifiably so – about the Indian fishers denying them their catch and their fast-moving trawlers destroying their mechanised boats and cheaper and smaller nets – knowingly, if not wantonly.
For over a decade and more, the northern Tamil fishers have also been talking about the Indian fishers’ greedy over-exploitation of the catch would dry up the fishing beds on their side within a year or two. Hence, there was the most urgent need to stop the Indian trawlers on their tracks, here and now. But more than a decade later, there is enough fish in those waters for both to catch and also fight over the rights to fish – the latter more in action than in words.
Livelihood issue
As is known, the Indian fishers have been using the argument of ‘livelihood issue’ under international laws and customs, to claim the right that the Sri Lankan fishers have been claiming as their own. The question is if the Tamil fishers of the north would allow their southern Sinhala counterparts to fish in their waters. In the years following the end of the ethnic war, there were reports of official patronage for introducing such a practice in the multi-ethnic East, if not the Tamil-exclusive North.
Maybe because the government could not justify the practice that did not derive from customs and traditions, the southern Sinhala fishers intrusion in the East was discontinued before long. Had it continued, despite the eastern fishers’ protests, it could have provided added justification for the Indian fishers’ claims to ‘livelihood’, inherited through generations and centuries and was being denied owing to political changes, in which they were not consulted.
Their backers have often cited the maxim, ‘Fish know no boundaries, so do fishermen.’ In theory, it has no room in the modern political context, where nations divide their borders, including the IMBL, through legitimate ways. However, in more modern times, such border-swapping, if it could be called so, has to provide for the livelihood of the affected populations – in this case, the Indian fishers.
Yes, ‘border-swapping’ under the 1964 pact is what the Indian fishers have been contesting. Even more loudly are their politicians. Leave alone their domestic political one-upmanship since the days of Jayalalithaa in 1991, every chief minister since then have asked the India’s central government to rescind the part of the accord that located the tiny Katchchativu islet on the Sri Lankan side of the IMBL.
The visible deviation of the IMBL to provide for it, and the claims that the islet had always belonged to the rulers of southern Ramanathapuram, is at the centre of it all. Incumbent chief minister M K Stalin too has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the subject, and political parties have included it as one of their permanent agenda-points in their election manifestos, including the ones for the upcoming parliamentary polls in India.
The poll process is already on and there was a time not very long ago when PM Modi was said to be considering the Ramanathapuram Lok Sabha constituency for contesting a second seat. That was only after eastern Varanasi that has become his ‘native constituency’, despite his hailing from western Gujarat, where he was chief minister for 15 long years. However, his party, BJP, has allotted the constituency to an ally. There have been other rumours of Modi contesting from one of a select few others from Tamil Nadu, but that too does not seem to be happening – at least as of now, the party having named candidates for them all, already.
Major constituency
After relative calm, the Palk Strait, connecting the two nations but dividing their fisher communities, has been in the news, for all the wrong reasons. Not a week seems to have passed when the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN), which is tasked with protecting territorial waters and natural resources, has not arrested Indian fishers and their boats. Under the law, passed by the previous Parliament, courts in the country are empowered and expected to levy heavy penalties on the fishers – and also auction their boats – as if it would discourage them from ‘poaching’ in future.
In one such case recently, the police reportedly arrested even owners of the Indian trawlers who had come to secure freedom for their fishing labour and also get back the boats that had been confiscated. For the record, these are lesser evils for the Indian fishers, after the two governments agreed in 2008 for the SLN not to shoot or otherwise attack the Indian fishers. The shooting stopped – and with that the arguments about the SLN suspicions that they could have been LTTE ‘Sea Tigers’ boats that they could not spare without risking their own lives.
Interestingly, the Bill was piloted by Ranil Wickremesinghe then Prime Minister and now President. It was initially moved as a private member’s bill by Tamil parliamentarian M A Sumanthiran. Recently, in a TV interview, Sumanthiran said he was the only one to organise a coastline protest of northern fishers. He seemed wanting to push back memories of Devananda, both as Minister and otherwise, threatening a mid-sea blockade of Indian trawlers, before calling it off.
For now, Devananda-backed Tamil fishers (they are a major electoral constituency for him, personally and for his party, the EPDP) have discontinued an indefinite fast outside the Indian consul-general’s office in Jaffna after his presence and intervention. In India, the Rameswaram fishers similarly ended their indefinite protest after discussions with Tamil Nadu government officials. They had earlier threatened to boycott the upcoming elections. Their decision in the matter remains to be clarified!
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
