Indian fishermen belonging to the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu often fall victims in the Sri Lanka ethnic conflict.  But the question is whether the Indian fishermen will gain any advantage in the fight between the Tamil militant groups and the Sri Lankan government forces in the island nation.

The fishermen have been in the midst of the politics of Sri Lanka and India for more than three decades now.  The Sri Lankan as well as the Indian authorities are exploiting the Indian fishermen.

The military campaign for independent Tamil Eelam began in the early 1980s and the Tamil militant groups set foot in the Indian soil in the early part of 1970s. They got their early military training engineered by the Indian external intelligence wing called RAW (Research & Analysis Wing) on the demand of local pressure especially from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

After Sri Lanka’s Tamil militant groups set foot in the Indian soil, the Sri Lankan government authorities have begun to view the Indian fishermen as their arch enemies, as they believe that the fishermen are being used as human shields, by the Sri Lanka’s Tamil militant groups.

The Palk Straits has become a busy place as the Tamil militant groups began sending their new recruits for training to India or abroad. Since then over 200 Indian Tamil fishermen have been killed. However, the perpetuators escape with no one claiming responsibility for the deaths, which has been increasing only as the years pass-by.

The Indian government, Tamil Nadu state government and the local fishermen in India have been accusing that the Sri Lankan navy of attacking them constantly.  For its part, the Sri Lankan navy revealed to the public that they had to drive away the Indian fishermen when they entered into Sri Lankan territorial waters.  But the fact is that the protests made by the Indian fishermen have fallen on deaf ears.

The attack against the Indian fishermen was on the rise especially after the Tamil militants began their military campaign against the Sri Lankan government forces in 1983. It was then that the saga of Sri Lankan navy intensifying its patrolling in the Indian Ocean region and especially in the troubled Palk Straits, which divides the island of Sri Lanka and India by narrow waters.  Although Sri Lanka, as an island, owns dozens of isolated islands between India and mainland Sri Lanka, most of which are inhabited by the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

Lobsters and shrimps are found in large quantities in the islands which fall under the judiciary of Sri Lanka. Indian fishermen being better navigators with large fishing trawlers than their Sri Lankan counterparts enter into Sri Lankan territory to get the valuable catch. Unlike their Indian counterparts, the Sri Lankan fishermen do not possess trawlers, and they are also restricted by the Sri Lankan navy to fish during the night. Adding fuel to the fire is another restriction by the Sri Lankan navy on the fishermen, on not to enter sea beyond a certain limit. This is so because the navy believes that the Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups would use the Sri Lankan fishermen as their shields to infiltrate into Sri Lankan government controlled areas.

Though the state of Tamil Nadu is home to 760,000 fishermen with 1076 kilometres of coastline, the fishermen are tempted to fish in the troubled waters, given the fact of a good sea-resource. Hence, they by trespass and endanger their lives. These fishermen are the breadwinners of their family.  Other members of their families are either housemaids or unemployed as they have no alternate job opportunities as the fishermen in the society are allowed to catch fish only.

The Indian fishermen have been often suspected by the Indian and Sri Lankan authorities of smuggling medicine, foods and dangerous weapons for the Tamil militants in Sri Lanka. And much worse is the case, as the Tamil militants misunderstand the fishermen to be informers of the Sri Lankan navy. Either ways, these fishermen put their life at risk just to earn a living. 

An owner of five trawlers based in Kodiyakkarai, on condition of anonymity, flatly denied this accusation when speaking to this writer and accused that the Indian and Sri Lankan officials play politics by using the Indian fishermen.  “However,” he said in admission that, “the Indian fishermen have often fallen victims at the hands of the Sri Lankan and Indian authorities.”

It is more than an established fact that the Indian and Sri Lankan authorities as well as the Sri Lankan Tamil militants and the Indian smugglers use the Indian fishermen as human shields to achieve their objectives.

The Sri Lankan naval soldiers target the Tamil Nadu fishermen on the pretext that they were found smuggling weapons meant for the Tamil militants in Sri Lanka.  This is seen as another form of political ploy engineered by the Sri Lankan government in order to keep the Tamil Nadu state government in check. 

Sri Lankan government became uneasy when the Tamil Nadu government in power, known for its support to the Tamil causes in the island nation, raised its voice against the attack of the Sri Lankan armed forces on the Tamil areas in the North and East of Sri Lanka.  The Tamil Nadu government had raised the issue to the Union Government of India to put pressure upon Sri Lankan government to stop attacking the Tamils in the island.  This move was indeed a mater of concern and worry for the Colombo government, which in turn is said to have engineered some tactical works to keep the Tamil Nadu government in check. The Colombo government ensured that the Tamil Nadu state government would not protest against the Sri Lankan government rather the state government was forced to condemn the terrorist activities of Tamil militants in Sri Lanka.

When the India’s former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated allegedly by the LTTE suicide cadre in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu in 1991 the Indian intelligence wing not only focussed their eyes wrath against not only the LTTE but also the Indian fishermen.  The Indian fishermen were under severe interrogations by the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) and RAW on the suspicion of having links with the LTTE.  Some of the fishermen were either killed or they were forced to end their own lives.

This was also the case across the troubled waters too. The Sri Lankan navy had suspected the Indian fishermen of smuggling arms for the Sri Lankan Tamil militants. 

That being the case, the Sri Lankan navy refuses to acknowledge the fact that these fishermen are only interested in the valuable fish found in the Indian Ocean region. On many occasions the Sri Lankan small vessels carrying the fleeing Sri Lankan Tamils have transferred the Tamil refugees to the big trawlers of India to take them into India to claim political asylum.  The Indian fishermen too took them along in exchange of valuable jewellery and thousands of rupees, though humanitarian reasons being on the forefront.  If the Indian fishermen refused to take the refugees along, thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils would have died in the deserted troubled waters of Palk Straits.  As a matter of fact, the Indian fishermen helped sustain humanity by taking the fleeing refugees from Sri Lanka. 

Politically and diplomatically, Sri Lanka did not want this to happen as it would paved way for India and international community to exert pressure upon Sri Lankan government to end the ethnic conflict.

Indian fishermen are not a security threat to the Sri Lankan and Indian states, they are merely trying to make a living and from time to time they earn money by taking the refugees fleeing Sri Lanka.  Their fishing ventures or their plying of refugees is not a security threat as perceived by the politicians in New Delhi, Chennai and Colombo.

The political parties in India including the state of Tamil Nadu played major roles by using the issue of Indian fishermen and Sri Lankan refugees. In fact the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK) and Congress party of Tamil Nadu played politics to topple the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) led by Mutthuvel Karunanidhi in the 1990s. When tens of thousands of Tamil refugees were brought into India by Indian fishermen in 1989 and 1990 the DMK government was forced to arrest dozens of Indian fishermen. The DMK government too arrested and detained hundreds of Sri Lankan Tamils without investigations on the suspicion that they are members of the Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups.  The fact is that these people were not a threat to the security, but only victims of the ethnic conflict who fled their motherland for a better future. The move is also seen as the DMK government’s necessity to prove itself as a law-abiding state to the Indian government. The Congress and ADMK protested, and resulted in the DMK government being dismissed form ruling the state. 

In another important turn, the ADMK, DMK and other political parties of Tamil Nadu staged peaceful protests demanding the central government to re-take the Kachchatheevu (a Sri Lankan island lying between Delft (Neduntheevu) of Sri Lanka and Rameswaram of India).  The political parties used the Indian fishermen as a shield claiming that the Indian fishermen had lost their fishing rights in the Palk Straits.  Although the rights of the fishermen were ceded to Sri Lanka through three agreements, the fishing issue has been taken for a ride by the local politicians in India. The immediate need is to reestablish the agreements and bring it to action from both the sides rather than just being ‘yet-another-agreement’ on paper.   

Kachchatheevu was once part of India but it was ceded to Sri Lanka through three successful agreements signed between India and Sri Lanka in 1972, 1974 and 1976 respectively. 

In the first agreement, signed in 1972, Kachchatheevu was ceded to Sri Lanka but Indian fishermen retained their fishing rights in the waters around Kachchatheevu. A clause in a 1974 agreement reversed this right stating that: “The fishing vessels and fishermen of India shall not engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) of Sri Lanka, nor shall the fishing vessels and fishermen of Sri Lanka engage in fishing in the historic waters, the territorial sea and the EEZ of India, without the express permission of Sri Lanka or India, as the case may be.”

Politics have taken centre-stage in both Sri Lanka and India, while dealing with the affairs of Indian fishermen.  The Indian fishermen are not going to gain anything from the politics played by the ruling elites of India and Sri Lanka as these fishermen are still voiceless.

The ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka, with its repercussions on the external relations with India has indeed disturbed the livelihood of Indian fishermen since early 1970s. It is for both the governments to sit across the table and discuss, deliberate and decide on the policy to be adopted for making the Indian fishermen live in peace.