The Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), an organisation representing the fishermen community, has announced launching of a protest campaign on April 21 against the "excesses committed by the Defence Housing Authority to evict fishermen from their ancestral villages and deprive hundreds of them of their livelihood.' Speaking at a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Thursday, PFF general secretary Saeed Baloch and other leaders said that the DHA administration was forcing the fishermen's community to abandon the make-shift jetty in Gizri Creek. They condemned the DHA move, maintaining that it was in violation of an understanding reached between the two sides in 2005. Describing the action as the latest in the series of exploitative moves against the poor community, they pointed out that this was the fourth time over the past three decades that fishermen were being evicted from a jetty. "In 2005, the then DHA administrator had concluded a written agreement with the local fishermen under which they were allowed to continue with their fishing activities in the creek from 6am to 6pm. However, the incumbent administrator refuses to honour the accord on the grounds that there is no reference of a jetty in the agreement,' he said, adding: "It's been eight days now that the fishermen are unable to get to their job.' According to PFF, families of around 2,000 fishermen have been facing starvation. Condemning the treatment meted out to the poor fishermen by the DHA security personnel recently, Mr Baloch claimed that those who tried to resume fishing in the creek were subjected to torture. "Their bicycles were impounded and boats damaged or torched,' he alleged. "It's a moment of reflection for everybody that hundreds of families deprived of even basic facilities barely survive amidst an elite colony. While multi-million dollar mega projects are being executed, villages of poor fishermen are without water even today,' he said. Recollecting the unfortunate events in the past, he said that bad luck struck fishermen when the Defence Welfare Housing Authority was established in the name of military officials' wellbeing and thousands of fishermen were evicted from their ancestral villages and forced to abandon their jetties one after another. The invaluable lands were handed over to the DHA at a throwaway price and, later, sold for millions of rupees,' he claimed. The PFF leaders recalled that fishermen were first evicted in the 1980s from the Gizri Creek jetty, which had been in their use since 1947. The fishermen then moved to the Marina Club site which proved to be a temporary arrangement. After enduring abuses, threats, arrests and losses at the hands of DHA personnel, the fishermen set up a jetty near the DHA College but were soon evicted from there, they said. The atrocities, they lamented, forced several hundred fishermen families to move to other settlements of their community like the villages in Keamari Town, Salehabad, Ibrahim Hyderi and the islands of Baba Bhit and Shamspir. The migration was still continuing, they added. The PFF leaders said that they had decided to launch the movement as the new DHA administrator was not responding to their repeated calls to stop depriving the poor fishermen of their only livelihood and ancestral settlements. They appealed to the government to take notice of the injustice against the fishermen, who were already under immense stress due to the depleting fish catch.