IN a country where powerful individuals like the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court can be treated in a cavalier fashion, what hope do the weak and the marginalised have? Every day, the Pakistani media is full of harrowing stories about the way the state and society ride roughshod over the rights of the minorities, women and the poor.

Indeed, we are now so hardened to these violations of basic rights and human dignity that we just turn a blind eye to them. Take, for example, the plight of our seafaring community. These unfortunate people have seen their livelihood being steadily taken from them by corporate and governmental greed despite their protests. But because they have no powerful spokesmen, and the media is not interested in their problems, their case is being lost by default.

Even less attention is paid to the destruction being wreaked along the coastal waters of Pakistan by an invading fleet of modern, highly mechanised foreign fishing trawlers.

According to the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), over half of the species that once inhabited our territorial waters have been wiped out by the foreign flotilla. The PFF asserts that around a hundred such boats are operating in Pakistani waters, while the Maritime Security Agency declares that half the number are fishing with official licences.

Whatever the number, the fact is that these boats use highly sophisticated methods that devastate the waters they operate in. Deploying sonar to detect fish in conjunction with huge, mechanised nets with extremely fine mesh, they spare nothing as they sweep along.

Worse, they discard fish that are not popular in their home markets. Apart from the sheer waste, these fish die and rot, causing a huge environmental hazard. According to one estimate, only 10 per cent of the fish caught by foreign trawlers are sold in international markets, with the rest being dumped back dead into the water.

I am witness to the sharp decline in the catch our fishermen bring back in their small, primitive boats. When I used to spend virtually every weekend at my rented hut at Karachi’s French Beach, I would buy fish from the villagers to barbecue for friends.

Over the years, the number of fish available has declined steadily, and my fishermen friends blame the government for allowing so many foreign trawlers to destroy their livelihood. In a sense, this cruel policy has locked the local communities into a self-destructive cycle: because they don’t find enough fish, they tend to catch whatever they can to feed their children. In doing so, they kill off small fish that should have been allowed to grow to maturity when they would have been able to breed. Some of them also use the fine-mesh kangra nets that cause such destruction to marine life.

When this liberal and allegedly corrupt licensing system is combined with what is happening to the mangrove forests that are the breeding grounds for numerous marine species, we have the makings of an epic disaster. Unchecked and virtually unmonitored industrial pollution has decimated the mangroves along the coast.

To make matters worse, increasing exploitation of the waters of the Indus means that less fresh water is entering the delta. This is a crucial element for the health of coastal marine life. But even more importantly, this seasonal decrease in the flow of the Indus causes sea water to rush into the delta and its surrounding land, devastating thousands of acres of fertile farmland.

The final nail in the way of life of those who live along the coast is the land hunger that has come to infect us. Housing schemes up and down the coast threaten to blight miles of beaches. Ugly bungalows and monstrous flats will soon march inexorably along our coastal areas. Villagers will be squeezed out by rising land prices.

Already, our coastal community is getting a foretaste of things to come in the shape of the development schemes being planned for two islands off Karachi. Despite protests, the PFF has been ignored while selling off this land to developers from the Gulf. The fisherfolk fear that their access to sea will be blocked by the bridge being planned to connect the islands to the mainland. And pollution will further reduce the number of fish along the coast.

Development is obviously desirable, but it should be sustainable, and not at the cost of the vulnerable. Here, because our coastal communities are generally uneducated and poor, the bureaucrats and generals in Islamabad ignore them as they issue fishing licences to foreign businessmen, raking in the dollars. In this business model, our own people get shafted while foreigners (and, possibly, our own authorities) make money at the expense of our impoverished fishermen.

Quite apart from the economic and environmental ruin these policies are causing, there is the permanent destruction of our beaches to consider. In the name of development, our citizens are being deprived of the beaches they have the right to enjoy. Once developers are let loose along the beach, pollution will make the waters too dirty to swim in.

But these concerns pale into insignificance when compared with what the government is doing to the livelihood of its citizens along the coast. According to estimates, local catches have declined by 70-80 per cent over the last decade. While the number of fish being caught by our fishermen is falling, the number of fishing boats has gone up. In order to catch more fish, villagers have taken loans to build boats that could increase their catch. They are thus in a catch-22 situation.

One reason why this government is so indifferent to the plight of the coastal community is that it is made up of people who have no feel or love for the sea. Had those who are suffering lived in Lahore or Islamabad, we can rest assured their voices would have been heard long ago. The Sindh and Balochistan governments, too, have failed in protecting their rights. The media, while giving them coverage occasionally, has not carried out a sustained campaign.

But societies that ignore the voices of the weak find that soon, those at the top of the food chain begin devouring the next layer, and then the next. Finally, they reach the prime ministers and the chief justices.