Indian Coast Guard, trawlers enter Jaffna seas

[TamilNet, Monday, 19 January 2004, 08:51 GMT]
More than a hundred Indian trawlers escorted by Indian coast guard vessels entered the seas off Jaffna's Vadamaradchi coast Sunday night, fishermen in Pt. Pedro told TamilNet. There were about sixty smaller Indian fishing craft with the trawlers they said.

''The Indian coast guard approached our boat and asked us whether there was any problem when we got close to an Indian trawler'', a fisherman from Inparutty, a coastal suburb of Pt. Pedro, told TamilNet Monday. Fishermen from Supparmadam, Sakkottai and Inparutty, coastal settlements near Pt. Pedro town brought the matter to the notice of the Federation Fisheries Societies in Vadamaradchi Monday morning, seeking urgent action to stop the what they described as ''an unprecedented intrusion into Jaffna's sea''.