KARACHI: Eighty-seven Pakistani fishermen recently released from different Indian jails reached here on Wednesday.
The fishermen were handed over to Pakistani authorities at the Wagah border on Tuesday from where they arrived in Karachi in a coach.
A large number of relatives of the fishermen and officials of the Fishermen Cooperative Society and the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum turned up at Ibrahim Hyderi to receive them.
Emotional scenes were witnessed when they met their loved-ones — some of them were released after 15 years. The fishermen released from Indian jails belonged to Ali Akbar Shah Village, Machhar Colony and Thatta district.
They later left for their homes. The fishermen belonging to Machhar colony are all Bengalis.
The fishermen narrated their plight in Indian jails. They said now they would never go fishing near the Sir Creek from where they had been caught by Indian authorities.
Some of them said they would even give up the fishing profession if the government provided them any alternative source of livelihood.
PFF chairman Mohammad Ali Shah on this occasion demanded that the Pakistani and Indian governments release all the fishermen languishing in their jails.
Call to resolve Sir Creek issue
Meanwhile, civil society organisations representatives have urged the Pakistani and Indian governments to resolve the Sir Creek issue and stop detaining poor fishermen on both sides of what is thought to be an undefined sea border.
They said that the issue of capturing fishermen in the open sea should be resolved through legislation because most fishermen were the sole breadwinners in their families that suffered a great deal of problems in their absence.
They observed that since 1965 successive Indian and Pakistani governments had not been able to resolve the Sir Creek dispute.
It was unfortunate that fishermen had to pay the price of this controversy by languishing in jails and their relatives back home faced poverty and hunger, they added.
They said that it was amazing that the people at the helm did not realise how they were destroying the future of children of these fishermen.
The children had to leave schools and had to work to support their families in the absence of their breadwinner elders.
“Both the governments are doing politics by detaining poor fishermen, which is unfair and the issue should be resolved permanently by issuing work cards to boat crew. The crew may show these cards to authorities at borders in case of straying into the neighbouring country’s territory,” they said.
Although many of the fishermen were later released through diplomatic dialogue and repatriated to their country, the exercise had been causing uncertainty among the fishermen community, they argued.