Striking a Jarring Note - The Hindu
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3/11/2015 Striking a jarring note The Hindu
http://www.thehindu.com/todayspaper/tpopinion/strikingajarringnote/article6979885.ece 1/1
Today's Paper » OPINION
Striking a jarring note
IndoSri Lankan relations have seen a marked upturn in recent weeks after a new administration took over in Colombo.Last month, during the visit of President Maithripala Sirisena, four substantive agreements were signed. There are alsoindications that India’s sensitivities regarding Colombo’s relations with Beijing are being addressed. Prime MinisterNarendra Modi is set to visit Sri Lanka this week, the first such bilateral visit at the prime ministerial level from Indiain years. Given this backdrop, it is jarring to note Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s remarks seekingto justify the shooting of Indian fishermen who cross the maritime boundary between the two countries. His claim thatfishermen found in another country’s territorial waters deserve to be shot, goes against the international policy oflooking at such transgressions as civil offences. It also goes against the established bilateral policy of India and SriLanka treating the fisheries conflict in the Palk Bay as a humanitarian and livelihood issue to be resolved peacefully.Following Mr. Wickremesinghe’s intriguing remarks in an interview to a Tamil television channel that there would beno shooting incidents if Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen avoided entering each other’s territory, External AffairsMinister Sushma Swaraj had to raise the issue at a recent meeting with Mr. Wickremesinghe, and underscore theessential humanitarian nature of the problem. The comparison with India’s approach to the Italian marines case wasalso inapt as it involved Indian fishermen being shot at from a foreign vessel and had nothing to do with any fisheriesconflict.
It is surprising that the Sri Lankan Prime Minister so casually talked about ‘shooting’ when such incidents hadsubsided considerably in the last decade or so. In recent years, Sri Lanka, in a move that is understandable in thecontext of trawlers from the Indian side depleting the marine resources in the Sri Lankan waters, has been limiting itsactions to arresting fishermen and seizing the trawlers involved. Through a bilateral agreement, the fishermen, too, arereleased after a short while, even though the detention of the trawlers continue to provoke angry protests in TamilNadu. There is little doubt that the root of the problem lies in trawlers from Tamil Nadu entering Sri Lankan waters,and engaging in unsustainable fishing practices using banned equipment. While negotiations between fishermen fromboth sides are needed before an acceptable solution is reached, any such agreement will necessarily have to involveIndian trawlers being phased out early. The answer may lie in Tamil Nadu fishermen being weaned away from fishinggrounds in the limited space in the Palk Bay and Palk Strait and being encouraged to engage in deepsea fishing.