Fishermen have demanded that the government stand with them and not punish the victims’, Joseph Xavier Kalapurakkal, president of Kerala Boat Operators’ Association, has said. He claimed that over the past six years, there have been 38 accidents in the sea involving fishing vessels and large ships. However, in all these cases, fishermen had not been defended properly, he said. Charles George of Matsya Thozhilali Aikya Vedi said that the Union government had failed in international legal fora repeatedly in the Enrica Lexie case in which two fishermen were shot dead by Italian marines. More recently, the government allowed vessel Mayuri Nari to proceed despite a mid-sea collision on July 8, said Mr. George. Protest action Mr. Kalapurakkal said that fishermen planned to launch a series of protest action against such government failures even as he called for stringent safety measures to ensure the safety of fishermen at the sea. Mr. George described the Kerala coast as a Bermuda Triangle for fishermen because of the repeated accidents off the State’s coast in recent times. He said that the fishermen community had been demanding that large ships that violate laws related to keeping to the shipping channel be punished. However, the agencies concerned had always failed to implement the rules of the sea, he claimed. .