Fishy happenings in Palk Bay

A RECENT news story stated that a group of Sri Lanka fishers from the Jaffna Peninsula met with their counterparts from Tamil Nadu in India to have a discussion on the issue of alleged poaching by Tamil Nadu fishers in the Sri Lankan waters of Palk Bay.

An International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) divides the Palk Bay waters between Sri Lanka and India. The Indian fishers cross the IMBL to trawl the Sri Lankan waters.

Sri Lankan fishers, who were unable to go out to sea to fish in terms of the restrictions imposed on fishing in times of war, are now able to go out to sea to fish in Palk Bay and there have been clashes between the two groups.

During the war, it was the Sri Lanka Navy which clashed with the Indian fishermen, which caused a great deal of resentment. The Indian delegation from the coastal Districts of Ramnad, Nagapattinam, Rameswaram and Pudukottai asked for time for them to complete their training in deep seas fishing which was on going, since once the training was complete they could relocate their fishing away from the Palk Bay. The Sri Lankan fishers did not agree.

The Palk Bay

The Palk Bay extends to around 70 miles and its boundaries are on the North West by the Indian mainland, on the South by the Pambian Strait, the islands of Rameswaram and Ramasethu, a coral reef also called Adams Bridge, on the East by the Sri Lanka coast and on the North East by an open passage accessing the Bay of Bengal, which is about 32 miles wide. The Northern part of Palk Bay which opens to the Bay of Bengal is called the Palk Strait.

Recently the Centre for Indo-Lanka Studies and the Pathfinder Foundation organised a sanvada (dialogue) on ‘Towards Resolving Palk Bay Fisheries Conflicts’. Palk Bay has some rich fishing grounds, which brought some critical issues which need urgent resolution.

Excellent presentations were made by Prof. Oscar Amarasinghe of the University of Ruhuna, Herman Kumara of the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement and Jori Scholtens Reincorpfish Project, among others. Some of the views expressed by them have been incorporated in this Column.

Topography

Elsie K. Cook, F.R.G.S. in her book ‘Ceylon, its Geography, its Resources and its People’ published in 1951, describes the topography of the area as follows:

‘Ceylon is a detached portion of the mainland of India and stands upon a small continental shelf which ends abruptly in the south and east, from five to 25 miles from the coast; at this point there is a sudden drop in the space of about 12 miles from 200 to 6,000 feet or more to the general level of the Indian Ocean.

‘This continental shelf has two elevated portions in the north and north-west, which nearly form land connections with the mainland. The first of these, known as Adams’s Bridge, is a narrow ridge which has only about 22 miles covered by shallow sea, from which a number of small islands project... The famous pearl banks or paars situated just between Mannar Island and Kuderemalai Point are also elevated portions of the continental shelf adjoining this ridge.

‘The other elevated area is much lower and completely submerged; it stretches from the north-east of the Jaffna Peninsula towards Point Calimere in India, the highest part being known as the Pedro Bank, an excellent fishing ground. The sea lying between these two ridges, all of which is very shallow, is known as Palk Strait. South of Adam’s Bridge the sea deepens rapidly in the Gulf of Mannar, nine tenths of which is over a mile deep. West of the gulf is another elevated area known as the Wadge Bank, which forms an extension of the Indian mainland, this is another very lucrative fishing ground.’

The rest of the continental shelf is described by A.H. Malpas (Biological Survey of the Littoral Waters of Ceylon) as follows: It is ‘a narrow ledge, ten to 20 miles width, ending abruptly at the so-called 100-fathom line as a more or less precipitous submarine cliff, dropping some hundreds of fathoms. The general character of this shelf is rocky, with varying growths of corals, sea fans and sponges, of many sizes shapes and colours. This growth is in places so thick as to form a diminutive submarine forest, the happy hunting ground of bottom feeding fishes of all kinds.’

Pink Gold Rush

It is over these fishing grounds that the Sri Lankan and Indian fishermen are in dispute. On the Indian side, their fishermen have trawled the bottom feeding shrimp (prawns) almost to extinction. This shrimp fishery was called the Pink Gold Rush and Tamil Nadu fishers made huge investments into shrimp harvesting boats and trawls, which were ecologically non sustainable and soon the Pink Gold was exterminated in the Indian waters.

Trawling took off in the 1960s in Tamil Nadu. The State government was very liberal in financing expansion of this unsustainable type of exploitation of Pink Gold. Tamilian big business was also attracted, as the return on investment was humongous.

The trawler fleet expanded exponentially, from a few 100 in 1975 to 2,000 in the 2005. There are 10 landing centres, 2,000 plus trawlers; each has a crew of four to five people, 10,000 fishers and 75,000 dependents.

At this time the Sri Lanka fishers were not allowed to go out fishing on a regular basis because of the civil war restrictions placed on their movement. The Indian fishers came over and poached in Sri Lanka waters. Trawlers from the coastal Districts of Tamil Nadu, such as Nagapattinam, Thanjavur, Pudukottai and Ramnathapuram, etc., had a field day in this non-sustainable exploitation of shrimp on the Sri Lanka side of the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL).

It is estimated that around 500 Tamil Nadu trawlers cross the IMBL daily. This happens seven days a week. Tamilian trawlers have been spotted even as far south as Pulmoddai on Sri Lanka’s East coast. Sri Lanka loses, at a conservative estimate, around Rs. 4 to 7 billion annually of this shrimp Pink Gold!

LTTE angle

There is some anecdotal evidence that LTTE also used these Indian fishers and their craft to smuggle weapons and fuel etc to Jaffna and the Wanni. The redoubtable and resourceful Research and Intelligence Wing (RAW) of the Government of India would have seen these Tamilian fishers also as a resource for communication and logistics purposes for their covert and overt operations in Northern Sri Lanka.

Early in 2007 the Maldivian Coast Guard sank an Indian trawler the Sri Krishna which was allegedly transferring ammunition from an LTTE ship. Inevitably this led to clashes with the Sri Lanka Navy. Indian fishers on the Sri Lanka side were often taken into naval custody for security as well as poaching.

Poaching on Indian side

This situation was further complicated by Sri Lanka fishers who poached on the Indian side of the IMBL in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. However, it is important to remember that these fishers are not from the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, but from the southern and eastern coasts of Sri Lanka who operate multiday boats in the deep sea.

The Indian Coast Guard arrests these Sri Lanka fishers under India’s Maritime Zones of India Act for violating India’s maritime zones. But it should be noted that this is a completely different issue from the issues faced by the fishers in India and northern Sri Lanka on the Palk Bay and the IMBL in that location.

Unfortunately, for obvious reasons, extraneous factors have clouded and complicated the real issue; interested parties have tried to bring these issues to the table at the same time! Such is the stuff of international and domestic politics in South Asia, the real issues disappear and externalities rule the day!

Hot political potato

In Tamil Nadu, this Palk Bay fishing issue is a hot political potato. When the coalition in power at Delhi, depends on the support of its regional satraps in Tamil Nadu, the Tamilian fishers and politicians exert humongous influence of the South Block (Indian Ministry of External Affairs).

The alleged machinations of the devious RAW, in using these Tamilian trawlers for logistic support of men and material to the LTTE, further complicated the issue. The further happenings when the IPKF was in the north and the Indian Navy was throwing around its weight in Sri Lanka’s northern territorial waters are another story in itself!

All this ensured that everything else but environmental conservation and rights of the fisher community on either side of the IMBL were the priority on the India side, at all relevant times; things like international political leverage, personal animosities, Indian domestic politics, Sri Lankan domestic politics, the issues arising at any given time over the status of Sri Lanka’s civil war, etc.

Plus, the leverage this issue gave the Indian politicians and bureaucrats over their Sri Lanka counterparts ensured that neither international law, equity nor the environment was ever a relevant issue to the official cynics who called the shots.

Indeed there is some bazaar talk among political mercenaries in Tamil Nadu that during the Sri Lanka Army’s humanitarian operation in the north east which ended the civil war, there was a trade off in order to keep the Tamilian satraps who kept the coalition in Delhi in power quiet; the whole issue of poachers was suppressed. But this is only unsubstantiated ex post facto opportunist gossip.

Humanitarian and economic issue

It is important to remember that this is primarily a humanitarian and economic issue that affects the fisher folk of Northern Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. The Sri Lanka fishers say they ‘first fell down from a tree and then a bull ran over them’! From the frying pan into the fire, that is.

The Indian fishers have exterminated the Pink Gold on their side of the IMBL, by unsustainable trawling methods. In order to earn their daily bread, they crossed the IMBL, which was not being fished, for security reasons explained above. Officials on both sides of the IMBL, for a variety of reasons, connived and kept quiet. When peace was established in northern Sri Lanka and the northern fishers resumed fishing, they clashed with their Tamilian counterparts.

Problem solving

There have been efforts to solve this at fisher-to-fisher level. In May this year representatives of affected fishers from both nations met in Colombo, but they were unable to reach a consensus.

The Indian fishers said they were currently undergoing training in deep sea fishing and said they would switch away from the Palk Bay once the training was completed and asked for time. However, the Sri Lanka fishers said it was their livelihood that was at stake and that they could not give any more time.

Prior to that a goodwill mission of Tamil Nadu fishers visited Sri Lanka and met their Sri Lanka counterparts. The visit was facilitated by the Association for the Release of Innocent Fishermen (ARIF). As an interim measure the Indians agreed to stop using environmentally unsustainable types of trawls and to keep their craft at a distance of three miles in Palk Bay and seven miles in the Jaffna-Vadamaratchchi area, from the Sri Lanka coast.

In 2010 representatives of Sri Lanka fishers, NGO representatives and two officials of the Government Ministry met with their counterparts in Tamil Nadu. This time there were three important outcomes: both parties agreed that trawling is environmentally unsustainable; the Indians agreed that they should stop poaching in Sri Lanka waters; and agreed that the two Governments should monitor fishing activities in Palk Bay through a joint monitoring group.

MOU

At the official level the two governments, in 2005, set up a Joint Working Group (JWG). A draft Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Indian Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying, Ministry of Agriculture and the Sri Lankan Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, for development and cooperation in the field of fisheries was developed.

The MOU provides for a Joint Working Group (JWG) This MOU was revised in 2008. It deals with matter such as: release of seized craft, prevention of use of force against fishers, procedure for dealing with arrested fishers and seized craft, salvage of released craft, enhanced surveillance and cooperation in that area. In 2010 the President of Sri Lanka and the Prime Minister of India made a joint declaration, which inter alia emphasised the need to establish the JWG.

The issue has been given the classic ping pong treatment by both the Governments and the fishers.

Recent incident

Recently a body was discovered five nautical miles off Sri Lanka’s by a Navy patrol and handed over to the Kayts Police. It was found to be that of an Indian fisher. The bodies of two others, it is reported, were washed ashore near Neduntivu (Delft) and Thondi on Sri Lanka’s coast. All these fishers it is alleged went mission on 2 April. Another body had been washed ashore near Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu.

On that day it is alleged that 634 mechanised trawlers left Rameswaram and only 633 returned. The boat of Anthony of Thangatchimadam was missing. A post mortem was conducted by Jaffna’s JMO, on the body found at Neduntivu, which showed that the body had injuries including nail marks on the upper part.

The Indian Navy escorted a group of six of the deceased’s relatives from Tamil Nadu and handed them over to the Sri Lanka Navy off the (Neduntivu) Delft Island, in Sri Lanka territorial waters, and they were brought to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital. According to newspaper reports, the deceased’s brother gave evidence to the Magistrate that on the day his brother went missing, he was also at sea and saw a large Sri Lanka Navy boat approaching his brother’s boat.  A further complication, also according to the newspapers, was that Sri Lanka’s Controller of Immigration has gone on record saying that this method of transport of the deceased Tamil Nadu fishers’ family was a violation of Sri Lanka’s Immigration Law.

Meanwhile, four Sri Lanka Navy sailors have gone missing some weeks ago, while on patrol in a small craft. It was reported that the craft and their personal weapons had been recovered sans the out board engine. They have not been found and the Navy’s Northern Commander had been reassigned to the Volunteer Naval Force. Also four Indian fishers from Rameswaram have gone missing 10 days later. Obviously, things are not calm in the seas around Palk Bay!

In a related incident, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Fisheries has complained to the President that the Sri Lanka delegation to the JWG meeting in Delhi recently had failed to raise the issue of Indian fishers poaching in Sri Lanka waters. Tamil Nadu has just had State elections and the result will reflect the fisher’s feelings on the issue.

‘Historic Waters’

India and Sri Lanka have formal agreements concerning these waters, of which exclusive usage since historical times has entitled both countries to declare them as ‘Historic Waters’.

In 1974 the Sri Lanka and Indian Governments entered into an Agreement ‘On the Boundary in Historic Waters between the Two Countries and Related Matters’. The 1974 agreement demarcated an IMB equidistant from the shores. Sri Lanka obtained jurisdiction over Kachchativu, a small uninhabited island, where there is a shrine of St. Anthony, which has an annual festival, which fishers from both countries attend, in terms of this.

The then Prime Minister, speaking in Parliament, on this agreement said: “The agreement demarcates a boundary in the sea from a point about 18 nautical miles north west of Point Pedro in Polk Strait to Adam’s Bridge, a distance of approximately 86 nautical miles. This boundary falls one nautical mile west of Kachchativu, so that the ownership of, and the sovereignty over the island, is now for all time free from dispute.”

Senior Sri Lanka officials such as former High Commissioners to India, Sir Richard Aluwihare and Shirley Amerasinghe, one time Secretaries to the External Affairs Ministry, N.Q. Dias and W.T. Jayasinghe and Legal Advisor to the then Ministry of External Affairs, Christopher. W. Pinto, played critical roles, at various times, in negotiating this agreement with India.

The Secretary to the Ministry of External Affairs of India has been quoted recently as saying: “We have been in touch with the Sri Lankan authorities… we even had a meeting of the Joint Working Group… it is very unfortunate that fishers have lost their lives… our emphasis has always been that we do not want violence of any nature against our fishers… if they are found fishing in Sri Lanka waters they must let us know, apprehend the fishers and turn them over to us.”

The 1976 Agreement established maritime borders in the Bay of Bengal and Gulf of Mannar.

Fishers from both countries have not taken these intangible divisions seriously. The Indian fishers and Tamil Nadu politicians always maintain that they should get Kachchativu back and that will solve the problem! They consider the 1974 Agreement as a betrayal of Tamil Nadu fisher interests. The reality is that the waters around Kachchativu have been overfished to exhaustion.

Suggestions

The Pathfinder Foundation Sanvada produced some recommendations for governments to sort out the Palk Bay issue. These were strengthened by suggestions made at the ensuing discussion. They are:-

1.    Have an Indo-SL joint monitoring, surveillance and control mission for the IMBL.

2.    Bona fide fishers in the area should be issued with verifiable in real time on line, smart card photo identity cards ratified by both Governments.

3.    Fishers arrested for violating IMBL should be dealt with, not by national law, but under Article 73 of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

4.    In each nation a single ‘one stop’ authority to be designated for dealing with violations of IMBL.

5.    ILO’s 2007 Convention on Work in the Fishing Sector, should be ratified by both nations, which among other things makes craft owners responsible for their crews actions.

6.    Both Governments should set up an interactive joint working platform to work out Palk Bay issues and civil society should be represented on this.

This issue needs to be resolved, and fast. It is not a political football, nor even a water polo ball! National political issues have to be ignored and the rights of the fishers of both nations protected and the fish stocks safeguarded from overexploitation. When will the politicians understand this simple fact?

(The writer is a lawyer, who has over 30 years experience as a CEO in both government and private sectors. He retired from the office of Secretary, Ministry of Finance and currently is the Managing Director of the Sri Lanka Business Development Centre.)