Animal Rights Activists Take to Street in Protest, Go Home with Promise of Better Future
A video which features a man cruelly battering a retriever went viral on Friday, sparking enraged reactions. The man was arrested in Kalaleh district in Golestan Province after the plate number of the truck seen in the footage was tracked, announced the Public Relations Department of the Directorate General for Environment Protection in Golestan Province in a statement issued on Sunday.
The footage shows a middle-aged man lifting a dog on its ears and banging it against the ground and a truck parked a stone’s throw away as the dog is whining. At last, the hound escapes into the back of the truck when the man starts hitting it with a spade. Tow hunters with guns on their shoulders are also seen as one of them is holding a bottle of what seems to be an alcoholic drink and gaffs while he enjoys the scene.
On Sunday, a group of animal rights activists gathered in strike in front of a Golestan Province DOE Bureau, demanding the persecution of the abuser and immediate care for dog’s physical condition. Summons were issued online calling for gatherings in other cities of Iran, including one held in Tehran’s Pardisan Park yesterday. Whereas conservative media in Iran do not usually cover animal rights issues, these gatherings helped bring the issue under spotlight once again. Officials under Hassan Rouhani’s administration were quick, as in most previous cases, to respond.
“The person arrested is one of the region’s authorized hunters who hunted pheasants and had no criminal records. After he was tracked, my colleagues contacted him on his cellphone. He came to the Environment Protection Bureau himself. The man is a simple, uneducated person and could not even imagine what he was doing is a crime. The retriever belongs to him and he says they punished the dog because it had eaten their food which was in the car. When we warned him of the crime and its consequences, he was panicked,” explained Esmaeil Mohajer, the director of the Golestan Province Environment Protection Bureau.
The director of Iran’s Department of Environment (DOE), Massoumeh Ebtekar wrote in a post to her followers on Instagram that the offender was arrested and that the dog was alive and being taken care of.
The likes of the case have surfaced over the past years again and again. Even though the younger generation is becoming increasingly aware of animal rights, bias in the name of religion has prevented breakthroughs particularly when dogs are concerned as they are regarded as ritually unclean.
“The main problem is lack of education in this regard and the normalization of violent conduct against animals. Legally speaking, we cannot do anything special to the man as the dog belongs to him and he owns several other dogs, too. On the other hand, the society’s sensitivity to such incidents is quite valuable. I personally hope that individuals, environmentalists and media show similar sensitivity for all areas of environment and nature. I wish we could see such protests and reaction for jungles, rivers, wildlife and seas, either,” says Mohajer.
Iranian Animal rights activists also say the officials they have met during their strikes have encouraged them to pursue the matter. In the meantime, a DOE executive told reporters the organization has submitted to the Administration the draft of a single article to support stray and abandoned animals. “In the submitted draft, abuse and killing of animals have been considered as penal crimes,” Shargh Daily quoted DOE deputy Farhad Dabiri as saying.
Rouhani’s administration has demonstrated a relatively successful profile in animal rights. “Despite the fact that the Department is not legally responsible for stray or abandoned animals particularly in cities, due to public sensitivity and demand, the single article has been drafted and submitted to the Administration in order to sort out the situation with these animals and prevent their abuse,” Dabiri added.