The fishy dispute

27 March 2014 05:29 am - 0 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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What is ‘fishy’ in the so-called `fishing dispute’ between Sri Lanka and India is not the conduct of the fishermen concerned but that of the ‘patrons’ of the Indian thieves. By Indian thieves I mean the Indian fishermen; and by their ‘patrons’ I mean the twin clowns of the political scene of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa and Karunanidhi, and the invertebrate Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

What, one wonders, would the reactions of any of these three have been if some burglar is apprehended while seeking to burgle one or more of their respective houses and then complains about such apprehension? They evidently don’t realize the fact that there is nothing special about Indians, that to us, Indians are foreigners like all others from other countries, and that they must comply with the law of the sea and the law of Sri Lanka and respect the integrity of Sri Lanka in their fishing endeavours. What is happening today is simply that when Indian fishermen invade or trespass upon our territorial waters they are sometimes naturally apprehended by the Navy, one of the functions whereof is to guard our territorial waters. The wrongdoers are not the Navy who apprehend those trespassers but the trespassers themselves.

Cannot Jayalalithaa or Karunanidhi understand this elementary fact? The territorial waters of Sri Lanka are as much a part of the territory of Sri Lanka as the land in the centre of Kandy, and any person who enters our territorial waters must be possessed of a valid passport and a visa by which they are given permission by the Government of Sri Lanka to do so. Neither of these clowns nor the ineffective Manmohan Singh contends that any of these fishermen robbing the catch of our indigent fishermen in our waters are possessed of passports or visas. One more amazing fact about the complaints of these clowns is that none of them complained about Sri Lankan fishermen being apprehended by the Indian coast-guard or Navy for trespassing on Indian waters.

In actual fact there is nothing at all to debate about these matters. The questions that arise are simply these. Do Indians have the right to rob Sri Lankans? Do Indians have the right to trespass upon the territory of Sri Lanka Obviously they don’t. That being so, the Indian fishermen are indisputably robbers and thieves who together with their patrons need to be dealt with under the law

One thing in our favour in respect of this matter is that one does not find the Government of Sri Lanka complaining about the arrests of Sri Lankan fishermen for trespassing upon the territorial waters of India. If any of our fishermen or others choose to trespass upon Indian soil or Indian territory in the sea, they must be dealt with under Indian law and it is not for us to complain about it.

Sri Lanka has at all times respected the rights of other countries and their sovereignty. It is only countries like India and the United States of America which act with impunity in respect of smaller and weaker countries. One would recall how the United States sent armed assassins from their Navy to surreptitiously enter the sovereign territory of Pakistan and commit the murder of a man named Osama Bin Laden who was living in that country. Osama Bin Laden has not been found guilty of any crime by the American or any other courts. He was convicted solely by the American Executive, the Head of which, Barack Obama, watched the entire murder episode on television together with his cohorts including Hillary Clinton.

Sri Lanka is no doubt a small, weak and impoverished country but yet, according to the law of nations, it enjoys equal rights and is possessed of an equal status with all other Countries including India, the United States, Russia and China. However, such basic and all important principles are of no concern to countries such as India and the United States which act on the archaic notion that ‘might is right’ and that the ‘law of the jungle’ prevails.

Is there really a problem regarding fishing or fishing rights between massive India and little Sri Lanka? In my view the only problem is the overbearing conduct of India which appears to regard India as being above international law vis-à-vis Sri Lanka, and on the moronic basis that Indians can do in Sri Lanka or within the territory of Sri Lanka whatever they wish entirely regardless of the laws of Sri Lanka, without let or hindrance from the Government of Sri Lanka or any agents of that Government.
If we are to act on the stupid premise that ‘might is right’ we go back to the stone age or beyond that, turning our backs on the ‘fruits’ of civilization, and regress to an age where the thug and the politically powerful could do whatever they wished with wholesale impunity. There would be no problem with regard to fishing rights if Indians like the twin clowns of Tamil Nadu and Manmohan Singh have the basic courage to express these truisms to or to give orders to the Indian fishermen to respect the rights of Sri Lanka and not to enter the territorial waters of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is no doubt a small, weak and impoverished country but yet, according to the law of nations, it enjoys equal rights and is possessed of an equal status with all other countries including India, the United States, Russia and China.

Tragically, none of them do so, and from time to time either of the clowns or some of their ‘hangers on’ say that the poor Indian fishermen know nothing of, or are ignorant of an International Maritime Boundary and therefore ‘stray’ into Sri Lankan waters in search of fish. This is ABSOLUTE RUBBISH – the evidence shows that hundreds or thousands of Indian fishing boats illegally invade Sri Lankan waters at about the same time, and even approach the coast of Mannar. This could hardly be equated to ignorant Indian fishermen accidentally crossing the international maritime boundary. These incidents show that the Indians behaving like a bunch of thugs purposely invade the territory of Sri Lanka knowing that they have the backing of their State Government and the Central Government of India.

There can be little doubt that Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha and Manmohan Singh are all hungry for power. However, does that hunger for power justify their abject cowardice on the one hand and impunity on the other?? These so-called dignitaries are afraid to be fair to Sri Lanka and to do what is right in their country for fear of losing votes, but that however does not mean that we must succumb and give into what they say.

The abject cowardice of the Indians is only matched by that of the Tamil National Alliance which, according to it, was elected to power by the Tamils of the Northern Province to safeguard their rights. The rights of the Tamil citizens of the North and the rights claimed by those who purport to represent them are different things. One find Wigneswaran and his band of racists of the TNA in the Provincial Council agitating for more powers for themselves while living in the lap of luxury at the expense of the indigent Sri Lankan population in like manner as their malodorous counterparts in the South.

What do these charlatans do to ‘earn their keep’? Do they raise even a whimper of protest about the overbearing conduct of India and/or say or do a thing to defend the rights of our fishermen to the fish in our territorial waters; they do not, for reasons similar to those which motivate the twin clowns of Tamil Nadu and that invertebrate named Manmohan Singh of the Central Government of India, who live in abject fear of losing the support of the Tamil voters of that country.

What is the attitude of our Government in these matters? Though Minister Senaratne made some strident noises on behalf of our Tamil and Moor fishermen of the North at one stage, his voice is now largely muted, and while talks allegedly proceed between India and Sri Lanka we will know little of the Sri Lankan attitude in these matters. In actual fact there is nothing at all to debate about these matters. The questions that arise are simply these. Do Indians have the right to rob Sri Lankans? Do Indians have the right to trespass upon the territory of Sri Lanka Obviously they don’t. That being so, the Indian fishermen are indisputably robbers and thieves who together with their patrons need to be dealt with under the law.

The problem that we have to live with is that that will never happen. Whatever the ‘principles’ that are alleged to govern international relations may be, as has been and is being manifested in successive ‘circuses’ in Geneva, in practice, it is hypocrisy and the horrid notion that ‘might is right’ that ‘rule’ international relations.

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The fishy dispute

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