The Fishermen Revolution 

Badil Baloch

Quetta: After decades of persecution, oppression and exploitation; the fishermen of Gwadar resorted to a sudden up rise, sending a wave of serious concerns to their exploiters and oppressors. Gwadar district has around a 600km coastline stretching from Jiwani to Ormara.

Historically, Gwadar has always been a fishing settlement that has gone through different political ups and downs. The majority of people from this district still depend on fishing-related trades, though circumstances are changing and various alternate sources of income have been adopted.

But the majority of voters are still fishermen, who play a key role in electing amember of the National Assembly and Provincial Assembly from the district. As mentioned earlier, the fishermen rose up for their rights after observing decades of silence. Though the up rise was sudden, but it wasn’t unexpected. It is true that the fishermen make up the majority in terms of voters in Gwadar district, but they have always been neglected and were counted as mere voters rather than humans. They were never treated with dignity, nor did they enjoy the power of their vote bank.

In Gwadar, there are two major regional political parties that enjoy widespread support among fishermen. The first is the National Party, which was formed in 2003 to counter nationalist politics in Balochistan but later itself became a Nationalist Party (NP), and the second is the Balochistan National Party (BNP).

Both of these parties hold their meetings and they usually include fishermen’s representatives on party levels, but they have always been proven to be mere formalities. Both of the leaders from these parties—Akhtar Jan Mengal from BNP and Dr. Abdul Malik Baloch from NP—have remained the chief ministers of Balochistan but their tenures could not bring the desired changes in the lives of the common fishermen.

They couldn’t even get the fishermen to register as workers, which is a constitutional right. The fishermen were suffering from extreme frustration owing to long-lasting issues such as trawling, unjustifiable cuts in the form of commission and no compensation for their damages, just to mention a few. And the aforementioned political parties failed to absorb the frustration of this marginalised class and they just kept engaging them with false claims and promises. It may not be an exaggeration to say that these parties took this political unawareness for granted.

Another man was seriously observing this frustration and political vacuum, and he decided to give it a try. The Jamaat-e-Islami Provincial General Secretary Hidayatur Rehman,a pro-establishment religion-political party, thus launched a movement dubbed ‘Haq DhoTehreek’, which with quick extension became ‘Haq Dho Tehreek Balochistan’.

The fishermen took this movement as the only hope for a better future, thus they joined it without giving it a second thought. With massive support, the movement began to hold massive protest rallies, block highways, observe shutter downs, and hold wheel-jam strikes.

Thousands of men and women marched for their rights under the banner of ‘Haq Dho Tehreek’. With this continuing flow of public support, the candidates of the movement cleaned sweep in the local body elections of 2022 in Gwadar district.

The fishermen now had a louder voice, and it was being heard in mainstream media as well as global media covered this too. ‘Haq Dho Tehreek’, which began as a religious party, evolved into a nationalist movement that was primarily supported by fishermen. But despite all this struggle, street power, commitment, political awareness, and unity, the fishermen have not beenable to get their issues resolved.

In the beginning days, every individual following this movement never bothered to utter a single word without the permission of Maulana Hidaytur Rehman; they rather waited for what their leader decided.

Nevertheless, things began to change when the fishermen of different cities and even villages made their own lists of demands and protested on their own. Many times, the fishermen of Pasnilauncheda protest without first consulting with their leader, Maulana. But Maulana Rehmanhad to reach out at every protest to keep his confidence and the movement alive, as if he was afraid the fishermen would abandon him if he didn’t follow their lead.

In this way, the leader became a follower. This movement of ‘Haq Dho Tehreek’ was supposed to make long-term policies regarding the issues faced by the fishermen, but the movement, upon not seeing a quick positive result, has shifted its direction towards other major issues that have not been solved for the last seven decades. Now ‘Haq Dho Tehreek’ is concerned about the next general elections, and till then, they want to stay on the roads, making sensational claims and delivering provocative speeches to engage the crowd so they throw Mir Hammal Kalmati out of the contest.

Mir Hammal Kalmati, a central leader of the BNP, has won a consecutive third term as the Member of the Provincial Assembly (MPA) of Gwadar. But for the first time, he is facing a real opponent in the form of Hidaytur Rehman.

Coming to the fishermen of Gwadar, they had joined a newly born movement, giving it enough energy, and turned it into a massive power out of nothing before fading away with nothing in hand.

The fishermen may suffer the same fate, as in BNP and NP, in ‘Haq Dho Tehreek’. The fishermen had risen up with Hidaytur Rehmanto get their issues resolved, but they seem to have realized that they have taken the wrong track. The fishermen can achieve their goals by forming a movement comprised entirely of fishermen, free of political and religious parties with a tainted history. Having said all this, if the fishermen get disappointed with this Tehreek, then it may take decades for them to come to this form again.