SAVE NORTHERN FISHER-FOLK FROM THE NETS OF INDIAN POACHERS

Sri Lanka gained its independence from Britain 74 years ago. But, 74 years later, are we as a country and a people truly free, sovereign and independent? Is every citizen in this country equal before the law or as George Orwell said in Animal Farm, ‘All are equal before the law but some are more equal than others”? The answer is quite evident from the news projected in the electronic and print media of the various forms of injustice meted out to people, either by way of unemployment or of farmers trapped in the botched up fertilizer fiasco crying their hearts out for fertilizer to nourish their paddy, vegetable and fruit crops; the extrajudicial killings of suspects while in police custody; the inordinate surge in the cost of living with the prices of essential commodities including food items increasing to levels way beyond the purchasing capacity of middle and low-income groups, the daily wage earners and those worst off, while none of those involved in scams -- sugar, palm oil and garlic among others -- held responsible or accountable and roaming free, leaving the people to foot the bill or pay the price.

We have no intention whatsoever of belittling the Independence Day celebrations held last week to mark the important occasion of hoisting the Lion Flag on February 4, 1948, by the Father of the Nation and Ceylon’s first Prime Minister Don Stephen Senanayake. But what we make haste to highlight is the fact that extravagance is not what the people expect at a time such as this when Sri Lanka itself is struggling to make ends meet with the ongoing dollar crunch making it near impossible to import fuel and other basic requisites that the country urgently needs.

Meanwhile, currently taking centre-stage is another life and death matter, which could be used to gauge how independent Sri Lanka is. It is that of a large number of Indian fishermen blatantly breaching the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) to poach in Sri Lanka’s territorial waters plundering its resources, by using banned fishing methods such as bottom trawling, under the very nose of the government that appears to be helpless in preventing such mass-scale robbery, which is depriving the northern fishing community of their only means of a livelihood and leaving them destitute and impoverished.

A case in point was that of several protests launched by northern fishermen last week to condemn the killing of two fishermen -- 34-yearold J. Premkumar, a father of three young children and 21-year-old A. Thanikaimaaran, both from the fishing village of Vaththiraayan in Supparmadam and against the unchecked and illegal fishing carried out by Indian fishermen, with the relevant authorities doing little or nothing to stop them.

The other was that of a northern fisherman setting fire to his boat and fishing gear last Thursday, to highlight the increasing anger against the Indian fishing trawlers that trespass into Sri Lankan waters for the sole purpose of pilfering our fishery resources. The fisherman from Polikandy in Valvettithurai said he was unable to carry out his fishing activities until the Indian poachers were stopped and that he was forced to look for alternatives to make a living.

Point Pedro fishermen claim that some weeks before the killing of the two Sri Lankan fishermen they had spotted nearly 400 Indian bottom trawlers in the northern seas while Vadamarachchi East Fisheries Federation President N. Varnakulasingham said Indian trawlers fitted with powerful lights could be seen near the coast in the early hours of the morning. He said many local fishermen had chosen to stay ashore after their nets had been damaged by Indian trawler activity while some had even gone missing in mid-sea.

The repeated assurances by Fisheries Minister Douglas Devananda have turned out to be only empty rhetoric and are of no use to the northern fishermen, who continue to insist that the minister and the government he represents put a complete stop to the poaching activities which continue unabated and more vigorously now than ever before.

Incidentally, the All Ceylon Fisheries Association (ACFA) held a protest outside the Fisheries Ministry on Tuesday urging the government to intervene in stopping the illegal fishing by Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan waters.

What does freedom or independence or the extravagant Independence Day celebrations mean to these people in the North and East? Amid the blatant invasion by Indian fishermen, can these people, bruised, battered and bloodied by a 30-year conflict consider themselves free and independent? The time is now, to free them from the clutches of Indian fishermen, tomorrow may be too late. The Indian fishermen should not be allowed to usurp the independence we won in 1948.