Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Chairperson Zohra Yusuf said on Monday that Pakistan and India failed to resolve the missing and captive fishermen’s issue.

Talking to Daily Times, she called for release of all fishermen who were imprisoned in Indian and Pakistani jails as well as those who were still missing. Both countries should talk to each other to resolve the issue amicably, she suggested. She said the fishermen’s issue was one of the oldest issues between the two countries and they failed to resolve it even after a passage of several years. She said that families of the fishermen were suffering in both countries due to their imprisonment.

The HRCP chairperson said that releasing fishermen always depended on both countries’ relations and they would release fishermen only on reciprocal basis. She said that non-demarcation of sea borders was the major reason due to which poor fishermen would cross the sea border and get caught without any fault. She said that fishermen would cross the borders most of the time by mistake. She called upon India and Pakistan to develop a mechanism to identify each other’s fishermen and release them on humanitarian grounds.

Foreign Office Spokesman Nafees Zakaria told Daily Times: “We have noted the news published in Daily Times on April 9 carrying the names of missing fishermen .We will match the list with the data available with the Foreign Office and forward the list to all relevant departments for confirmation of the names on the list.”

Zakaria said that Pakistan regularly took up the issue of imprisoned Pakistanis with the Indian government. He said that fishermen would be arrested frequently. He said that under a consular access agreement signed between Pakistan and India in 2008 both countries were required to exchange lists of prisoners in each other’s custody twice a year, on January 1 and July 1. He said that a mechanism was already in place because fishermen would cross into each other’s territories quite often. He said that most of the time the names given by a country would not tally with the names of the people imprisoned across the border. He said the Foreign Office would collect the names of the arrested fishermen from humanitarian organisations, fishermen’s relatives and the media reports.