AMONG the most impecunious and marginalised of society, naive fisherfolk have long endured the political chill in Pakistan and India ties.This hostility forces needless incarceration and delays release, destroying lives, livelihoods and families. Earlier this month, another fisherman, Jagdish, 35, died in a Karachi prison. His body has spent a fortnight in the morgue, awaiting transfer to India. The fifth foreign prisoner to die in captivity, he is yet another reminder of the hard positions taken by the two states and the erasure of humanitarian concern. As poor kin on both sides of the divide battle for survival, anglers waste away in dire conditions — they are criminals to be maltreated and kept underfed and without healthcare in grimy, choked prison cells. All this pain is in the name of an unsettled history and indiscernible maritime boundaries. Moreover, the rate of arrests is directly proportional to the temperature of tensions. Ordinarily, what they do would be perfectly plausible and far from illegal: fishermen do not cross territory; as eroded ecosystems drive shoals of fish into deeper, fresher waters, they simply follow their catch. Although interventions by human rights activists in both countries bring occasional relief in the form of prisoner exchanges, neither country has tried to seriously resolve the issue of hostage fishermen. Our maritime story should not be complicated. But since New Delhi’s illegal annexation of India-held Kashmir in August 2019, Pakistan-India ties have been frostier and hearts too hardened for compassion. Therefore, fishermen end up spending years more in jail than the prescribed six months; they frequently have arbitrary charges such as narcotics and terrorism slapped on them to face drawn-out trials and are denied consular access and legal aid.

Other than humanity, old traditions of courtesy, too, have been abandoned: for the first time during peacetime, India and Pakistan did not exchange formal wishes on their respective independence days this year, nor were sweets swapped at the Wagah-Attari border. Further, since 2019, this has been the longest period of downgraded missions due to a truculent Indian leadership. However, the issue of innocent ‘trespassers’ should not be emblematic of our fraught links. As humans cannot depend on the vicissitudes of Pakistan-India ties, fisherfolk deserve a no-arrest policy. In the end, both countries must use humanitarian, and not just political, confidence-building measures to rescue humanity.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2023