Jaffna fishermen complain against SLA restriction

[TamilNet, Thursday, 01 November 2007, 01:12 GMT]
Fishermen societies in Jaffna submitted Tuesday appeals complaining against severe restrictions enforced by Sri Lanka Army (SLA) on fishing in the Jaffna lagoon, to the Human Rights Commission (HRC), Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM) and International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) offices in Jaffna, representatives of fishermen societies said.

Before the clash between Sri Lanken armed forces and the Liberation Tigers on the Jaffna lagoon on 14 th October, SLA had restricted the number of fishermen allowed to fish in the Jaffna lagoon to 700 and the distance to 3 km into the lagoon.

A fisherman, under the above restriction could go fishing only once in two weeks.

The new SLA restriction imposed Tuesday cut down the number to 350 fishermen and the distance was reduced to 1 km.

Under the present restriction a fisherman could go fishing only once in a month.

Only 100 fishermen from Kurunakar and Paasaiyoor each and 50 from Ko'lumpuththu'rai villages are allowed by the SLA to fish in the Jaffna lagoon.

The restriction imposed on the fishermen has pushed the fisher families to severe economic hardship, the sources said.