HYDERABAD: Members of fishing community and activists of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) took out rallies in Hyderabad and Thatta to mark the International Rivers Day on Wednesday, reiterating demand for treating rivers like humans and extending them the same right to existence and life as humans have.

PFF workers, including women and children, and rights activists marched in the rally from Shahbaz Building to the press club where it turned into a public meeting.

PFF chairman Mohammad Ali Shah who led the rally demanded the government grant legal and constitutional rights to Indus to exist unfettered, permanently solve issues of water scarcity, destruction of delta, sea intrusion and social and economic destruction of livelihoods of millions of people belonging to Sindh.

He said that this year the PFF had launched “Campaign for personhood rights of river Indus” and the rally was a continuation of weeklong series of events to be held across the province.

International Rivers Day celebrated

He said the environmental destruction of Indus was a result of its “imprisonment” in dams and demanded the Constitution and law must recognise that the mega-development projects injured rivers in the same way as human beings were injured, imprisoned or enslaved.

Mr Shah said that polluting rivers and freshwater bodies must be considered an infringement on their basic right to exist. Rivers, lakes and water bodies must be granted rights as persons or human beings in order to guarantee their existence and coexistence in the wider ecological world, to protect them, and to guarantee their survival, he said. He said that there were thousands of large and small rivers in the world but there were only 292 rivers longer than 1,000 km and only 21 of these reached their final destination to ocean without any obstruction as almost all other rivers had been deprived of their natural flow and vigour due to construction of dams.

He said that states, governments and international financial institutions had been building dams in the name of development, changing river courses and destroying ecology of rivers.

Pakistani state and ruling elite had “imprisoned” Indus in dams and barrages and it no longer reached its final destination, as a consequence its ecology and life, riverine belts and delta had lost fertility, agriculture, fishes and mangrove forests, he regretted.

He appealed to elected representatives of Sindh to learn from successful cases from across the world where rights of rivers were being recognised and given the same legal rights as human beings like in New Zealand and India.

He called for stepping up the struggle for the restoration of natural flow of Indus so that the river could flow to its final destination without any obstruction.

Activists Fatima Majeed, Saeed Baloch, Dr Ashothama Lohana, Zulfiqar Halepoto, Punhal Sario, Noor Mohammad, Umer Mallah, Ramzan Mallah and others paid homage to rivers and demanded their restoration.

They said that on this day when people across the world were celebrating rivers day by gathering on the banks of rivers full of water, people of Sindh were expressing sorrow over empty and dry bed of the Indus.

Earlier, folk singer Maula Bux Mallah and his team sang traditional songs as the rally progressed to its destination.

THATTA: Hundreds of fishermen celebrated International Rivers Day by taking out a rally and calling for release of Pakistani fishermen incarcerated in Indian jails, release of freshwater downstream Kotri Barrage and restoration of rights of fishing communities.

The participants, including women and children, marched thro­ugh main thoroughfares be­fore gathering in front of Thatta Press Club.

Abdul Ghani Katyar, Ameer Bux Jat, Ahmed Dandal and others who led the rally said that even as the world celebrated rivers day, authorities concerned in Sindh as well as stakeholders appeared to be least concerned about starving fishing communities.

They said that more than five dozen fishermen belonging to Kharo Chhan, Keti Bundar and Shah Bundar of Thatta and Sujawal districts were still languishing in Indian jails.

They said that discontinuation of freshwater release downstream Kotri Barrage had made lives of hundreds of fishermen miserable and compelled them to switch to alternative livelihoods.

Published in Dawn, March 15th, 2018