Catch 22

On December 4, 2004, 18-year-old Ketan Bharadwaj Solanki and six other fishermen from Diu woke up to the sound of firing and warnings over a loudspeaker asking them to surrender. Their trawler had been three days at sea, off the Gujarat coast, when Pakistan’s Maritime Security Agency (MSA) arrested them for allegedly crossing the international maritime boundary. They had drifted a bit with the tide during the night but “were still a good 13 nautical miles within the Indian border”, says Solanki, who spent the next six months in a Karachi jail before returning to Diu.

Solanki got away lucky. For most of the fishermen who are taken in by the coastal authorities on either side of the border, being under arrest for two to four years is commonplace and some have even languished in jail for as long as nine years. At last count, there were 366 Indian fishermen in a Karachi jail and more than 200 of their Pakistani counterparts in various Indian jails, according to the Pakistani Fisherfolk Forum (PFF).

Solanki was able to get out of jail relatively soon because of the work of groups like PFF who along with the Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) and the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) on their side of the border complemented by the efforts of activists like Jatin Desai of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) here in India.

Over the last decade or so, these ‘invisible arrests’ have been brought to the fore by these groups. In 2012, they even managed to get a joint judicial committee from both countries to visit the fisherfolk on either side of the border, both in jail and outside, and in the same year the total toll of arrested fishermen in either country fell to under 100, the lowest in two decades. This number has since increased, but the committee has not given up just yet. It is currently calling for a ‘no-arrest policy’ and highlighting the misuse of the captured fishing trawlers — Pakistan recently auctioned more than 215 captured Indian trawlers, each worth at least ₹40 lakh.

A Malayali in Pakistan

Biyyothil Mohyuddin Kutty, who hails from Kerala’s Malabar region, first travelled to Pakistan in 1949 and eventually settled in Karachi. A member of the PILER and general-secretary of PPC, he is vociferous about fisherfolk’s rights in his adopted country. “The fate of fisherfolk does not depend only on oceanic tides,” the 84-year-old activist said over a Skype call. “It also depends on the tide of the India-Pakistan relationship, which suffers several ups and downs.”

His 60-odd-year existence in Pakistan has been equally chequered — from leading various business firms, to working as a journalist, getting arrested in 1958 for ‘leftist’ leanings and turning a political negotiator in an effort to integrate ethnic Balochistan into mainstream Pakistan. “I became involved with the Sindhi fisherfolk issue through my connection with PILER. People such as Karamat Ali, managing director of PILER, Muhammad Ali Shah and Saeed Baluch of PFF, and advocate Faisal Siddiqui have been instrumental in highlighting the issue and I assist them in any way I can,” says Kutty.

He and his associates visit the jailed Indian fishermen and help them contact the Indian High Commission. “If a batch of 30 fishermen is released today by Pakistan, another new batch is picked up after a week or two. The same thing happens on the Indian side. Thus, the fisherfolk are a permanent tragic feature of Pakistan-India maritime relations. We help the released fish-workers find a safe passage back home.”

This passage is a longwinded one — fishermen who land in trouble for straying a few kilometres from their home turf off the Gujarat coast, now have to pass through Wagah at the Indo-Pak border and travel to Amritsar and then to Ahmedabad before finally reaching home.

Pointing out that fisherfolk elsewhere in the world too routinely stray into foreign waters — Indonesian fishermen drift into Australian waters, Pakistanis into Iran, Thai into Malaysia and Eritreans into Yemen — Kutty says they rarely face the animosity that fisherfolk from India and Pakistan encounter in each other’s territory. “It is because of the peculiar relationship between our countries that the fisherfolk are caught in the crossfire.”

Compounding the problem is the fact that in some regions, such as Sir Creek, each country claims its own Exclusive Economic Zone and no one really knows where one side begins or ends. “In the sea there are no boundaries or flags or demarcations, how are we supposed to know which part of the water is Hindustan and which Pakistan?” asks Jagadish Ramji Solanki, a 29-year-old fisherman from Diu who spent more than a year in Karachi’s Landhi Central Jail for inadvertently crossing international waters.

There have been instances where coastal authorities have crossed international borders to make arrests, especially during periods of high tension between the nations.

While the issue seems insurmountable, Kutty remains hopeful. “We know that it will take a long time, but we are ultimately pushing for a no-arrest policy where fisherfolk should just be sent back if found on the wrong side,” he says, adding, “Why should something that happens in faraway Kargil or Siachen affect their lives?”

The Indian vanguard

Referring to Mumbai’s 26/11 date with terror, Jatin Desai narrates the story of a boatman, Chaudhury, on whose vessel Ajmal Kasab and his fellow terrorists apparently arrived from Pakistan. “They killed everyone except Chaudhury, who was the tandel (captain) and knew the directions; and just before reaching Mumbai they killed him. His boat was from Porbandar (Gujarat).” His point: “What is surprising is that the Coast Guard arrests hundreds of fishermen every year but couldn’t stop a bunch of guys with guns?”

Mumbai-based Desai, like Kutty, has donned various avatars, including that of a journalist for Gujarati daily Janmabhoomi and later Midday. He was president of the Bombay Union of Journalists in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and has been involved with the fisherfolk issue since 2002.

“I trace my roots to Bhavnagar in coastal Saurashtra, Gujarat. I heard about Premjibhai Khokhari, who was the first to conduct a survey of the number of missing and detained Indian fishermen in Pakistan. This led me to join the PIPFPD,” says Desai. Together with his Pakistani counterparts, he is pushing for bilateral agreements, a bi-annual count of all arrested fishermen, and ways to help the arrested fishermen communicate with their friends and family.

He says Indian fishermen are more adversely effected owing to several reasons: In Kutch and Saurashtra the fluctuating tides are sometimes enough to carry trawlers to the other side. Moreover, industrialisation has robbed them of a good catch on this side and they are forced to tread close to the Pakistani side for a better haul of fish.

While the arrests were few and far between in the 1980s, they have increased. Moreover, fishermen today remain longer at sea, close to 10-12 days, compared to a week some decades ago. “With each boat that is captured, the livelihood of not only the eight fishermen on board is effected but also that of the nearly 20 people who sell the catch; currently there are reportedly 780 trawlers in the MSA’s possession and at least 215 with the Indian coastguard,” says Desai.

Rather than arresting fishermen for geopolitical gains, he says, both countries would do well to take them into confidence in an effort to enforce coastal security. “They are the ones who know what happens at sea and will therefore be the best eyes and ears.”

After more than a decade of campaigning, he despairs at the helplessness that forces him to stop answering calls from affected families. Desai mentions a friend called Fazal Bhai in Kutch who he says, calls at least thrice every week to ask about his relatives jailed in Karachi. “Earlier I used to tell him that I’d call him back if there was any news, but then it became really difficult to keep saying that after a while. So now I don’t pick up the phone. Because, what can I tell him really?”

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