Fishermen protest against recent arrests by Sri Lankan Navy
Some of those fisherwomen took part in the agitation along with their babies and appealed to the Indian government to intervene and hold talks with the Sri Lankan authorities to ensure their release at the earliest.
DTNEXT Bureau
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MADURAI: Condemning the Sri Lankan Navy for the recent arrest of 14 Tamil Nadu fishermen and demanding their release, many fisher folks lodged a protest in Rameswaram on Saturday.
The agitating members also staged a road blockade in front of a nationalised bank in Rameswaram and raised slogans against the Sri Lankan government.
Some of those fisherwomen took part in the agitation along with their babies and appealed to the Indian government to intervene and hold talks with the Sri Lankan authorities to ensure their release at the earliest.
The 14 fishermen were apprehended by the SL Navy on grounds of trespassing into the territorial waters of Sri Lanka, sources said.
S Emarit, president of the Rameswaram All Mechanised Boats Fishermen Association, appealed to the central government to consider the Rameswaram fishermen also as citizens of India.
The central government showed no concern for the fishermen, who were being frequently arrested by the SL Navy and their boats detained, to protect their interests. The fishermen were contributing much to generate foreign exchange through seafood exports, but they were considered merely as a vote bank, he lamented.
