KARACHI: Men, women and children from Atharki, Shah Bunder, Keti Bunder, Chach Jehan Khan and Jati in Thatta and the coastal villages of Karachi who have been separated from their family members gathered outside the Karachi Press Club here on Tuesday to raise their voice against the injustice that fishermen on either side of the Pakistan-India border are subjected to as a result of their straying into the neighbouring country’s territorial waters.

Tears rolled down little Maina’s cheeks as she told Dawn that her father and four uncles, all fishermen, were locked up somewhere in India after going missing at sea about a year ago.

Naseema, holding her eight-month-old son in one arm and her husband Sulaiman’s photograph in the other, said that only God knows how she had been feeding her family for the past 11 months after her husband had gone missing. “I have three children and this here is the youngest of them,” she cried hugging her baby close.

“Our men were our only support. We have become beggars in their absence,” Maryam said, adding that she hailed from Rehri Goth where several male members of their family including her aged maternal grandfather were still missing.

Sakina, a mother from Thatta, said her five sons, namely, Yaqoob, Mohammad, Ali, Hussain and Nathu, had been missing for the past 11 months. Her son, Abu, said the five fishermen were aboard his boat Al-Muneer when they all went missing along with the boat.

Haji Yousuf said he heard that his four nephews and six others on his boat were all arrested 11 months ago. “I have no news of them other than that they were picked up by the Indian navy,” he added.

Husna from Rehri Goth said that her paternal uncle, Zaman, maternal uncle, Usman Sachu, and cousin, also named Usman, were among the unlucky few whose boat was pushed into Indian waters during a cyclone in 1999. “One of my uncles, Nawaz, has also died in an Indian prison and his body was sent back here last year. God knows if the others will make it here alive,” she wept.

Sitting on the road divider, an elderly mother, Amna, quietly watched the others chanting slogans for their loved ones to be freed. She was there for her son, Aziz, who she said had been missing for the past 15 years. “I recently got a word from another fishermen released from India that my son is alive. I pray God keeps him safe. I wish him to return home in my lifetime,” she said.

Speaking to the media, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF) spokesman Sami Memon said: “There are 183 Pakistani fishermen currently languishing in Indian jails. And 63 of them have been there for 19 years now.

“The Indian government has also confiscated some 300 boats that were the only means of livelihood for several families in our coastal villages.”

PFF Chairperson Mohammad Ali Shah said his organisation had been fighting for the poor fishermen of both Pakistan and India. “I appeal to the governments of both countries to think about the poor fishermen. They are all innocent people. If they crossed into the other’s territory, they did it unknowingly as there is no line indicating the border in the sea,” he said.

“Under Article 73 of the UN Convention, no fishermen unknowingly crossing over to another country can be picked up, arrested and kept in jail for years. It is ironic that both Pakistan and India are signatories to this. Yet there are so many fishermen locked up in the prisons of both countries,” he regretted.