[GreenYouth] Coast Guard seeks greater role in State waters

[T Peter]

Coast Guard seeks greater role in State waters

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-kerala/coast-guard-seeks-greater-role-in-state-waters/article8521895.ece

   - [image: T. Nandakumar] T. NANDAKUMAR
   


State officials feel that handing over of abjudication powers to Coast
Guard may lead to harassment of fishers
[image: A Coast Guard vessel detaining a vessel for illegally entering the
Indian Exclusive Economic Zone.— Photo: PTI]
A Coast Guard vessel detaining a vessel for illegally entering the Indian
Exclusive Economic Zone.— Photo: PTI

n a move that could have serious implications for the fishing sector, the
Coast Guard has approached the State government seeking a greater role in
enforcement of marine laws in territorial waters under State jurisdiction.

The government has sought a detailed proposal from the Coast Guard before
finalising its response. “Giving the Coast Guard a greater role in
enforcement and regulation would require an executive order or an amendment
to the Kerala Marine Fishing Regulation Act 1980,” says Director of
Fisheries Mini Antony, who held discussions with the Coast Guard Commandant.

“With faster vessels and infrastructure and better reach, the Coast Guard
would be in a better position to act against unlicensed vessels and
violations of territorial jurisdiction. They can coordinate with the
Coastal Police and Marine Enforcement wing to enforce marine laws and
enhance coastal security,” says an official.

But others feel that the move is fraught with danger. The State Act
envisages a limited role for the Coast Guard in enforcement and regulation.
While a panel of officials from the Fisheries Department and Coast Guard is
empowered to impound vessels, seize catch and impose penalty, the
abjudication power rests with officials in the rank of Deputy Director.

“Handing over abjudication powers to the Coast Guard could result in
conflict of interests and harassment of fishers,” says an official. “State
department officials with a better understanding of ground realities are
appropriate for the role.”

*Clashes off coast*

Meanwhile, tension has been building up following clashes between
traditional fishers and trawlers off the coast of Alappuzha and
Thiruvananthapuram last week.

Local fishermen allege that trawler boats, mostly from Tamil Nadu, were
intruding into areas demarcated for the traditional sector.

“The ban on night time trawling is also violated by these vessels,” says
Joseph Xavier Kalappurackal, general secretary, Kerala Fishing Boat
Operators’ Association.

The Kerala Swathantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation (KSMTF) has warned that
the situation could escalate into a major confrontation unless the
government took steps to check the illegal trawling. Four fishers from
Andhakaranazhi in Alappuzha were injured in a clash at sea on Saturday
while trying to prevent trawling.

*Bottom Trawling*

The bottom trawling operations have led to dwindling catch for local
fishers. “The period from April to mid-May is considered a boom time, but
this year the boats are returning with very poor catch,” says T. Peter,
secretary, National Fishworkers Forum.

Ms. Antony said the coastal police and Marine Enforcement were keeping a
close watch on the situation to prevent the situation from deteriorating.

--
-

*‘Coast Guard better equipped to act against territorial jurisdiction
violation’*
-

*Intrusion by trawlers into areas earmarked for traditional fishers alleged*

--

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[GreenYouth] Vizhinjam Prject. Need for Urgent Intervention.

[KP Sasi]

Joseph Vijayan writes: ഇന്നലെ (25 ഏപ്രിൽ) ദേശാഭിമാനി ദിനപത്രത്തിന്റെ എല്ലാ
എഡിഷനുകളിലും ഒന്നാം പേജ് നിറയെ വിഴിഞ്ഞം തുറമുഖ പദ്ധതി അദാനി വഴി
നടപ്പാക്കുന്നതിനെ വിമർശിച്ചുകൊണ്ടുള്ള വാർത്തകൾ "കടൽക്കൊള്ള" എന്ന
തലക്കെട്ടോടെ പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചിരുന്നു. "തുറമുഖം വരുംമുമ്പുതന്നെ
കൂട്ടമരണത്തിന്റെ തീരമായി വിഴിഞ്ഞം മാറിയാൽ അത്ഭുതമില്ല" എന്ന് ഒരു
റിപ്പോർട്ട് ചൂണ്ടിക്കാണിക്കുന്നു.. "മത്സ്യബന്ധനത്തിന് മരണമണി" എന്ന
തലക്കെട്ടിലുള്ള വാർത്തയിൽ "കടൽ കുഴിക്കൽ തുടങ്ങിയതോടെ ആ മേഖലയിലാകെ മത്സ്യം
കിട്ടാക്കനിയായി" എന്നും എടുത്തു പറയുന്നുണ്ട്. ആ പേജിലെ പ്രസ്തുത
വാർത്തകളെല്ലാം കൂടി ഇവിടെ ചേർക്കുന്നു.
എന്നാൽ ഈ ദുസ്ഥിതി ഉണ്ടായിട്ടും വിഴിഞ്ഞം തുറമുഖ പദ്ധതിയോടുള്ള
സി.പി.ഐ.എമ്മിന്റെയും എൽ.ഡി.എഫിന്റെയും നിലപാടിൽ മാറ്റം ഉണ്ടായിട്ടുണ്ടോ?
ഇല്ലെന്നു തന്നെയാണ് ഈ പേജിലുള്ള മറ്റ് വിവരണങ്ങൾ നൽകുന്ന സൂചന. ഒരിടത്ത്
ഇങ്ങനെയാണ് പറയുന്നത്, "മുഖ്യമന്ത്രി ഉമ്മൻ ചാണ്ടി ആക്ഷേപിക്കുന്നതു പോലെ
വിഴിഞ്ഞം അന്താരാഷ്ട്ര തുറമുഖ പദ്ധതിയെ സി.പി.ഐ എമ്മോ ഇടതുപക്ഷമോ
എതിർത്തിട്ടില്ല. കേരളത്തിന്റെ വികസനത്തിന് വലിയ സംഭാവന നൽകാൻ കഴിയുന്ന പദ്ധതി
വൈകാതെ നടപ്പാക്കണമെന്നാണ് എൽ.ഡി.എഫ് നിലപാട്."
പദ്ധതി നിർമ്മാണം ദുരന്തങ്ങൾക്ക് തുടക്കമിട്ടിട്ടും ഈ പദ്ധതിയോടുള്ള സി.പി.ഐ
എമ്മിന്റെയും ഇടതുപക്ഷത്തിന്റെയും നിലപാട് മാറുന്നില്ല എന്നത് ഖേദകരമാണ്.
വിഴിഞ്ഞത്ത് രൂപകൽപ്പന ചെയ്തിട്ടുള്ള വാണിജ്യ തുറമുഖ പദ്ധതി ഇപ്പോൾ ദേശാഭിമാനി
ചൂണ്ടിക്കാണിച്ച ദുരന്തങ്ങൾക്ക് ഇടവരുത്തുമെന്ന് ഞാനുൾപ്പെടെ പലരും നേരത്തേ
ചൂണ്ടിക്കാണിച്ചിരുന്നു. അദാനിയെന്നല്ല പൊതുമേഖലയിൽ നിർമ്മിച്ചാലും ഈ
ദുരന്തങ്ങൾ തന്നെയാണ് സംഭവിക്കുക. പശ്ചിമഘട്ട മലനിരകളെയും, കടൽ പരിസ്ഥിതിയെയും
നശിപ്പിക്കുന്ന ഈ കൃത്രിമ തുറമുഖ പദ്ധതി ഉപേക്ഷിക്കുകയാണ് വേണ്ടത്.. ഈ പദ്ധതി
കേരളത്തിന്റെ വികസനത്തിന് ഒരു സംഭാവനയും നൽകാൻ പോകുന്നില്ലെന്നും മറിച്ച്
കേരളത്തെ വലിയ കടക്കെണിയിലേക്കാണ് നയിക്കുന്നതെന്നും പദ്ധതിയുടെ ഔദ്യോഗിക
രേഖകൾ വിശദമായി വായിക്കുന്ന ആർക്കും മനസ്സിലാക്കാൻ കഴിയും. മാത്രമല്ല, ഇനിയും
കൂടുതൽ സാമൂഹ്യ-പരിസ്ഥിതി ദുരന്തങ്ങൾ വരാനിരിക്കുന്നു എന്നും അറിയുക.. മഴ
എത്തുന്നതോടെ വൻ തോതിലുള്ള കര നാശവും സംഭവിക്കാൻ പോവുകയാണ്. എല്ലാ
ദുരന്തങ്ങളും ഉണ്ടായ ശേഷം വളരെ വൈകി നിലപാട് മാറ്റുന്നത് പരിഹാരമാകില്ല എന്നു
കൂടി തിരിച്ചറിയുക..
[image: Josph Vijayan's photo.]

[image: Josph Vijayan's photo.]

[image: Josph Vijayan's photo.]


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[GreenYouth] Government's response to drought 'is lacking in compassion', economists, activists tell Modi

[Sukla Sen]

http://scroll.in/article/807178/governments-response-to-drought-is-lacking-in-compassion-economists-activists-tell-modi

DROUGHT COUNTRY

Government's response to drought 'is lacking in compassion',
economists, activists tell Modi

Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Jean Dreze among 170 citizens who urge Centre
to implement relief measures rapidly.

Yesterday · 07:00 pm
Scroll Staff

The government's response to the massive drought being faced by large
parts of the country "is sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and
compassion", 170 eminent citizens wrote in an open letter to Prime
Minister Narendra Modi.

The signatories, including leading activists, economists and
sociologists such as Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Jean Dreze, Jayati Ghosh
and Ajit Ranade, noted that the crisis has resulted in "massive
distress movement of populations, causing broken childhoods,
interrupted education, life in camps, city pavements or crowded
shanties".

They urged Modi to make "rapid amends, by implementing all the
traditional relief measures as well as by ensuring full implementation
of the National Food Security Act 2013 and the Mahatma Gandhi National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 in letter and spirit".

Here is the full text of the letter.


Dear Mr Prime Minister,

We wish to convey our deep collective anxiety about the enormous
suffering of the rural poor in large parts of India’s countryside as
they are battling drought, often for the second or even third
consecutive year. In areas where rains have failed, farmers who depend
mainly on rainwater to irrigate their crops have no or very low crop
yields. Those who rely on irrigation are also affected, with
groundwater sinking and streams and reservoirs drying up. All this
adds to chronic agrarian distress reflected in a massive slowdown in
agricultural growth during the last few years, with no imminent signs
of recovery.

The consequence of this adversity is massive distress movement of
populations, causing broken childhoods, interrupted education, life in
camps, city pavements or crowded shanties. Add to this the old and the
infirm who are left behind, to beg for food or just quietly die. The
cattle for whom there is no fodder, sold at distress prices or just
abandoned to fend for themselves. And the drying up even of sources of
water to drink.

However, the response of central and state administrations to looming
drought is sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion. The
scale of MGNREGA works is way below what is required and wages often
remain unpaid for months. Even more gravely, the central and state
governments are doing far too little to implement the National Food
Security Act, three years after it came into force. Had the Act been
in place, more than 80 per cent of rural households in the poorer
states would be able to secure about half of their monthly cereal
requirements almost free of cost. In a drought situation food security
entitlements should be made universal.

In addition, we find no plans in most of the drought-hit regions for
feeding the destitute, especially old persons left behind when
families migrate, children without care-givers, the disabled and other
vulnerable groups. ICDS centres could have been upgraded to supply
emergency feeding to the destitute during the drought, but this has
not happened. Under Supreme Court orders, school meals should be
served on all days, including holidays, in drought-affected areas, but
this is rarely the case. Arrangements to augment drinking water
supply, including ensuring that marginalised hamlets have functioning
tube-wells and transporting water where necessary, are awfully
inadequate. There are also few attempts to create fodder banks and
cattle camps. Most of these measures used to be a routine part of
state response to drought, and were often undertaken with a great
sense of urgency, but they are barely being considered today.

The highest priority of the central government in a drought situation
should be to ensure the creation of millions of additional person-days
of work in all affected villages. Instead, the government has not even
allocated enough funds this year to sustain the level of employment
generated last year – 233 crore person-days according to official
data. At current levels of expenditure per person-day, this would cost
well over Rs 50,000 crores. Yet the central government has allocated
just Rs 38,500 crores to MGNREGA this year, of which more than Rs
12,000 crores are required to clear pending liabilities. These
liabilities, only prove the distress crores of workers have been put
through because of wages left unpaid for months at a time.
Unemployment allowance and mandatory compensation for delayed wage
payments, are also not paid citing “insufficient funds”, resulting in
a failure of the Act, and its legal safeguards. Most alarming today,
is that instead of expanding, MGNREGA is all set to contract in this
critical drought year, unless financial allocations are vastly

[GreenYouth] Malegaon acquittals shows how easy it is to charge Muslim men with false terror cases

[Sukla Sen]

http://scroll.in/article/807196/the-daily-fix-malegaon-acquittals-shows-how-easy-it-to-charge-muslim-men-with-false-terror-cases

Malegaon acquittals shows how easy it is to charge Muslim men with
false terror cases

2 hours ago
Updated 2 hours ago
Shoaib Daniyal

Terror as farce

In 2006, terror attacked the Muslim-dominated town of Malegaon in
Maharashtra. A bomb blast near the town’s Hamidia mosque killed 37
people and severely injured 100.

Investigations by the National Investigative Agency strongly pointed
to a Hindu terror angle behind the bombing of the mosque. The shadowy
Abhinav Bharat group was seen to have carried out the blasts and was
also the prime accused in the bombings that followed in the town two
years later, in 2008.

Maharashtra’s Anti-Terror Squad, though, went on a different path. It
charged nine Malegaon residents, all Muslim, with the 2006 Malegaon
bombing. On Monday, every one of them was acquitted by a Maharashtra
Control of Organised Crime Act court. This was after the NIA itself
has admitted in 2014 that it did not have any evidence against these
nine.

This comes even after the senior prosecutor in the Malegaon blasts,
Rohini Salian, told the Indian Express that she had clear orders from
the Union government to go soft on the Hindu terror angle.

The politics over terror has a deep and perverse history in India. On
May 16, 2014, symbolically the day the results of the 2014 Lok Sabha
elections came in, the Supreme Court acquitted six Muslim men charged
with conducting the 2002 terror attack on Gujarat’s Akshardham Temple.
Like in Malegaon, the case had not only been concocted but Narendra
Modi, then the chief minister of Gujrat, had used it in his political
messaging.

This is just one of scores of cases cross India where investigative
agencies seem to have fabricated cases against poor Muslims. In many
cases, the Indian media simply swallows the police version, declaring
them to be terrorists. In all of this, innocent lives are ruined, a
community is brutalised – and the people who actually carry out the
terror attacks get away scot free.


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Peace Is Doable

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[GreenYouth] Two gay rights activists hacked to death in Bangladesh

[Sukla Sen]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/people-hacked-death-bangladesh-capital-160425141155758.html

BANGLADESH
Two gay rights activists hacked to death in Bangladesh

Editor of magazine for transgender community among latest victims of
murders targeting liberal activists.

26 Apr 2016 06:39 GMT | Bangladesh

[Video]

Two people, including the editor of a magazine for the transgender
community, have been hacked to death in the capital of Bangladesh.

A third person, a security guard at the apartment building where the
killings took place, was seriously wounded in Monday's attack in
Dhaka, in which six attackers murdered Julhas Mannan and Tanay
Mojumdar.

Mannan was the editor of Rupban, the only LGBT magazine in the country.

"Unidentified attackers entered an apartment at Kalabagan and hacked
two people to death," Maruf Hossain Sorder, a Dhaka Metropolitan
Police spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Hasina vowed to hunt down and prosecute
those responsible.

She accused the country's opposition party and what she called allied
armed groups of being behind the killings. The opposition has denied
the allegations.

No suspects have been arrested, police officer Shamim Ahmed told the
Associated Press news agency.

The incident came two days after a university professor was killed in
similar fashion in an attack in Rajshahi, which was claimed by the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS) group.

Mollah, a security guard, was wounded in the attack and is being
treated in hospital [Mahmud Hossain Opu/Al Jazeera]

Parvez Mollah, an 18-year-old security guard, told Al Jazeera that the
six attackers were aged between 25 and 30 and that they had arrived at
the building posing as couriers.

"They told me that had some parcels for Mannan and, as I went up to
his apartment, three of the six attackers followed me to the second
floor and attacked Mannan with machetes," Mollah said.

"As Mannan fell to the floor, the attackers entered the apartment and
fired bullets before fleeing."

Al Jazeera's Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from Dhaka, said that freedom
of speech was threatened by such attacks.

OPINION: The hit list - Endangered bloggers of Bangladesh

"There is widespread fear in the country and the government is denying
involvement of international terrorists or ISIL, even after such
groups have announced that Bangladesh is one of their operating
bases," he said.

Earlier this month, Nazimuddin Samad, a 28-year-old law student, was
hacked to death by three men riding a motorcycle as he walked with a
friend in central Dhaka.

Last year, at least four atheist bloggers and a secular publisher were
hacked to death in a long-running series of killings of secular
activists.

The South Asian country has seen a surge in violent attacks over the
past few months in which liberal and secular activists, members of
minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have been targeted.

With additional reporting by Mahmud Hossain Opu

[Video]
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Peace Is Doable

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