• by Zofeen Ebrahim (karachi)
• Tuesday, January 12, 2010
• Inter Press Service

Tears streaming down his face, Abdul Karim, 40, stepped onto Pakistan soil for the first time in almost two years. He has just been released from prison for the crime of encroaching on India’s waters.

Karim was one of 31 fishermen released one cold, foggy midnight by Indian authorities as a reciprocal gesture that came a week after Pakistan released 100 Indian fishermen last Christmas Day.

'It was a very emotional scene,' said Hafiz Faisal, 26, a volunteer worker for the non-governmental Edhi Foundation’s centre in the eastern city of Lahore, in Punjab province.

Faisal, along with 14 other volunteers of the region’s biggest charity network, was on hand to welcome the freed fishermen on their return to Pakistan from Wagah in India, the border between the two South Asian countries. 'With tears rolling down their eyes, all of them bent down to kiss the soil,' he said.

The fishermen, who, with the exception of one, hail from Sindh province, were sent to Bhuj prison in the Indian state of Gujarat.

On Jan. 15, 2008, 24 of the 31 fishermen were arrested while fishing on Sir Creek — a 96-kilometre strip of water in the Rann of Kutch marshlands, which separate the Indian state of Gujarat from Pakistan’s Sindh province. From Wagah, the Foundation brought them to its centre, where they washed up, shaved, had haircuts, put on new clothes and enjoyed a warm meal, said Faisal.

'We looked like savages when we came,' said Karim.

Faisal has witnessed prisoner exchanges between the two countries a number of times. 'When ours come home, most look unkempt and scruffy, are usually barefoot and narrate to us the inhuman condition they had been living under,' he said in an interview with IPS.

Later in the night, accompanied by Edhi volunteers, the Pakistani fishermen proceeded on a 17-hour journey toward the southern port city of Karachi, where they were given a resounding welcome by their relatives.

'For a whole month, after I was captured, I was tortured and beaten up. They (the prison authorities) kept telling me I was a terrorist and plotting an attack,' narrated Karim in a phone interview with IPS from his village, Goth Haji Yusuf Katiar, in Thatta district of Sindh province. He insisted he had not trespassed into the Indian territory. He was among the 24 who were apprehended from his village.

Fourteen-year-old Ameer Buksh said he often found insects in his food. 'They would often hit me and call me names and tell me I was a militant.'

At Katiar village, a massive celebration greeted the long-awaited homecoming of its 24 sons, including Buksh. There was song and dance for the newly arrived as flags flew over the entire community.

'I’m jubilant,' enthused Nazeer Ahmed, one of three brothers who were among the released fisherman. The jollity will continue for a few more days, 'and then it is back to reality,' he said.

'While my three sons were away, we had no means of livelihood,' said Ahmed’s father, Abdul Ghani, 70. 'I’m elated that they are back, he said.

But something else bothered him. 'There is a niggling feeling at the back of my mind. I can’t help but worry about the vessel that remains impounded,' the village elder said. This is casting a shadow over what could have been a happy ending to a sordid episode.

A boat costs an equivalent of 3,000 to 3,600 U.S. dollars, said Mohammad Ali Shah, who heads the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), a non-governmental organisation working for the rights of indigenous fishing communities.

'We bought those boats on installments and are still paying off the loan,' lamented Ghani. Yet he remains optimistic. 'If the government can return our sons, they will also help us get our boats back.'

But Shah is not too sure. 'Our experience has been that while fishermen are exchanged, boats are never returned by either side,' he said. Without a boat, there is no fish to catch, and entire families are pushed deeper into poverty. According to a 2008 study carried out by the PFF, in the last 20 years, a total of 4,516 Indian fishermen and 729 boats had been apprehended by Pakistan.

Ghani has yet to disclose to his sons that while they were away, he had to borrow money from the villagers. 'We had no other means of livelihood and I’m too old to feed 18 mouths. There were days when we didn’t have anything to eat and I had to literally beg,' he recounted.

Neither has he told his sons that to celebrate their release, he had to sell his wife’s gold jewelry.

The maritime boundary between India and Pakistan remains disputed even after 62 years of partition between the two countries. This issue was well on its way to being resolved by May 2009, the deadline set by the two countries 10 years ago. Then the Mumbai terrorist attacks happened on Nov. 26, 2008, after which the Composite Dialogue series (aimed at confidence-building measures) between the two countries, which began in February 2004, stalled.

Earlier on, in 2007, when relations between the two Asian neighbours — which had been in a long, drawn-out conflict — showed signs of improving, the two governments formed a joint judicial committee, comprising four judges from each country, to look into the release of prisoners from both sides.

As a first step, it was decided that they would exchange prisoner lists languishing in each country’s jails, to be followed by efforts to expedite the release of prisoners who had completed their terms, and women and children who had violated visa restrictions and had overstayed. It took two years before one of them — Pakistan — made the first move when it released Indian fishermen.

When Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ordered the release of 100 Pakistani fishermen last month, he also said that the long inactive judicial committee would be revived. But Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, one of the committee members, has not received a formal notification. 'I don’t know if the committee exists as I’ve not received any intimation so far,' he said.

'The (purported) concern shown by both countries remains on paper only,' said Zahid, who accused the two states’ foreign ministries of apathy. 'They are least bothered and do not take human misery into consideration,' he said, adding that unfair arrests are 'dealt with as routine matters.'

In March 2006, one of 100 Indian fishermen set free from a Pakistani prison, 50-year old Sugghan Soma, died of cancer on the day of his release. 'How come the Pakistani government did not free the ailing man sooner so he could be with his loved ones?' Zahid asked. 'It’s sheer humanitarian indifference!

He further asked: 'Why should our government insist that we would only release the Indian fisherman on reciprocity basis? Why don’t we just do what is right and release those who have completed their terms?'

© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service