The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) has sent out a petition to the Prime Minister and President of India expressing strong concern at the tardiness, lack of transparency and general inaction of the authorities in the wake of the tragic disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 with 239 passengers and crew members on board.
The petition calls on organisations to join ICSF in communicating, in the strongest terms, these concerns to the appropriate national and international authorities, and to demand that the Malaysian and Indian authorities, with the full cooperation of Inmarsat, collate the available data and provide the families and public at large with a transparent, accessible and up-to-date account of what happened to this flight.
Ms Chandrika Sharma, the Executive Secretary of ICSF, was aboard MH370 whilst on her way to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to attend the 32nd Session of the FAO Regional Conference for Asia. As ICSF’s Executive Secretary for over 15 years, Chandrika has been at the forefront of the international struggle for the recognition of the human rights of small-scale fishing communities, particularly women. She has worked tirelessly to increase understanding about, and garner support for, small-scale fisheries, and to strengthen the network amongst organisations working with fishing and coastal communities, advocating for their rights and contributing towards the development of socially just fisheries. Her disappearance is a tremendous loss to the social movements in fisheries.
The petition adds: We are devastated by her disappearance and find it shocking that there is still no credible public information on what actually happened to MH370. We understand that the Malaysian government has now released the raw satellite data provided by Inmarsat that was used to narrow down the search for the missing MH370 to the southern Indian Ocean but even this data has been only selectively released, we understand. We hope that we can put more pressure for greater transparency, so as to obtain more detailed and concrete information.
The complete text of the ICSF petition can be accessed at:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/tragic-disappearance-of-malaysian-airlines-mh370
http://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/prime-minister-of-india-president-of-india-tragic-disappearance-of-mh370?utm_source=guides&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=petition_created
ICSF is an international non-governmental organization that works towards the establishment of equitable, gender-just,self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector.
For more, please visit www.icsf.net
ICSF 2014