"Pakistanis to protest arrival of Chinese fishing vessels", 1 September 2020

Fishermen in Pakistan will protest the arrival of 20 Chinese deep-sea trawlers that will fish in the exclusive economic zone off Sindh and Baluchistan provinces.

The pressure group Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum has announced a campaign against the trawlers' arrival near Karachi. [...]

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PFF Chairman Muhammad Ali Shah said in a statement, "These vessels threaten the livelihoods of small fisher[men] by depriving them of catch today, and in future by ecologically destroying the sea."

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The president of the Gwadar Fishermen Alliance, Khuduaidad Waju, said the Chinese ships will badly hurt local fishermen.

"Fishing in the sea is a source of livelihood for over 2.5 million people in coastal towns of Sindh and Baluchistan, and the new trawlers will deprive us of our livelihood," he told the Nikkei Asian Review.

In the wake of protests, the provincial supervisory body Registrar Cooperative Societies Sindh has written a letter to a manager of the Fishermen's Cooperative Society, which issued the permit to the Chinese deep-sea fishing vessels. The letter, a copy of which was made available to Nikkei, asks the manager to detail the agreement with the company that owns the vessels, the Fujian Hengli Fishery.

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