TULF for lenient treatment of Indian fishermen

By Nirupama Subramanian

COLOMBO, JUNE 2. The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) today demanded that the Sri Lankan Government treat encroachments by Indian fishermen leniently and not drag them to prisons or courts of a country alien to them.

In a letter to the President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga, the senior vice-president of the party, Mr. V. Anandasangaree, demanded the immediate release of the 39 Indian fishermen arrested in recent weeks by the Sri Lankan Navy and being held in Jaffna prison.

Sri Lanka had a ``moral obligation'' to treat them with sympathy.

He said much hardship had been caused to the fishermen by the changes in territorial boundaries when New Delhi handed over Kachchatheevu to Colombo. ``It is they who lost their livelihood by the change of ownership of the island,'' he added.

Ill-educated fishermen could not be expected to know international boundary lines when the map of the waters between the two countries could confuse even experts, he said.

The Sri Lankan Government's heavy-handed treatment of the encroachments, including the several incidents of firing by the Navy in which some fishermen were killed, was the main reason why the Tamil Nadu Government now wanted Kachchatheevu back.

While Sri Lankan Tamils have often demanded that their brethren across the Palk Straits should champion their cause, this is the first time that a Sri Lankan Tamil party has taken up cudgels on behalf of Indian fishermen.

Mr. Anandasangaree said he and other TULF members, including Mr. Mavai Senathirajah, another MP from the district, had met the arrested fishermen in prison.

``We were shocked to see them in the same clothes that they were wearing at the time of their arrest a week earlier. They are kept with other local remand prisoners in small rooms with hardly any proper sanitary facilities,'' he said adding that the Navy should not arrest ``genuine'' fishermen.

A senior Navy official said recently that the fishermen were arrested with the ``consent'' of the Indian authorities in order to discourage such intrusions.

According to the official, intruding Indian fishermen posed one of the biggest problems for the Navy in the high- security northern waters of Sri Lanka.

The Sri Lankan Fisheries Minister, Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse, met his Indian counterpart, Mr Nitish Kumar, in New Delhi on Friday to discuss the problems arising out of intrusions by fishermen of both countries in each other's territorial waters.

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Section  : International
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