Rights Activists Protest Treatment Of Stray Animals

[Guest guest]

http://www.uanews.tv/archives/protest/animals01.htm

 

Ukrainian animal-protection organizations are

concerned over the plight of stray animals in the

country. Activists say stray animals are treated

brutally before being put to sleep and that there are

no laws in the country governing the rights of

animals. Officials say they are performing a public

service by ridding the country of such animals, which

can carry diseases.

 

Prague, 31 January 2003 (RFE/RL) -- Mahatma Gandhi

said the greatness of a nation and its moral progress

can be judged by the way it treats its animals.

 

Animal-rights organizations in Ukraine say there are

no laws regulating the treatment of animals in the

country and that strays are often treated very cruelly

before being put to sleep. The authorities reject

these charges and insist they are clearing the country

of stray animals, which spread infectious diseases and

often attack people.

 

Andrei Kurach is the head of the Western Ukrainian

Society for the Protection of Animal Rights based in

Lviv. He said: " This problem of lack of money and lack

of legal regulations ends up in the situation where

here in Lviv -- and not only in Lviv, in the whole of

Ukraine -- there are no [proper] shelters for animals,

as is the practice in the whole world. And stray

animals find themselves in [processing] factories. "

 

Tamara Tarnavska is the head of the Animal Protection

Society (SOS), based in Kyiv. Tarnavska told RFE/RL

that in Kyiv, a municipal organization called Animals

in the City is responsible for catching stray dogs and

taking them to shelters. She said the company treats

the animals with great cruelty.

 

Tarnavska alleges that in order to earn extra money,

employees skin the dogs alive to sell their fur, a

practice that makes the pelts more valuable. Fat from

dogs is also sold on the black market. Many in Ukraine

believe such fat is a cure for tuberculosis. Tarnavska

said that 3 liters of dog fat costs nearly $100.

 

Last October, activists from SOS went on national

television with former employees of Animals in the

City who revealed that stray dogs are often caught

using an inhumane poison and sometimes die slow,

painful deaths. The activists used hidden cameras to

film instances of such animal cruelty.

 

Tarnavska said the film caused an uproar in Ukraine

but that the company's practices haven't changed. She

said that employees of Animals in the City continue to

catch animals by injecting them with a paralyzing

poison that acts as a muscle relaxant. " After being

poisoned, an animal, as well as it may happen to a

human being, is paralyzed but remains conscious and

dies after 15 minutes of agony. It presents an

opportunity for a dog catcher to take the animal from

the street because it cannot move. But the death of

this animal is terrible. What kind of humanity you can

speak of in this case? I don't know, " Tarnavska said.

 

Animals in the City denies it uses such a poison.

However, in 2001, the Ukrainian magazine " Krik "

published an interview with a former employee of

Animals in the City who confirmed that he had used the

poison while working for the company.

 

Valeriy Budko is the deputy director of Animals in the

City. Budko denies that his company uses inhumane

methods. " [The poison] diethylene is allowed to be

used in Ukraine, but we shifted to a softer form [of

tranquilizer]. We make a mixture from several legally

permitted drugs and, as a result, a dog is not able to

move for some time. Later, it comes back to its senses

and is brought to the point of screening, " Budko said.

 

Budko said some stray dogs that are considered

dangerous or seriously ill are put to sleep on the

spot. The rest are killed after 10 days if the owner

does not show up.

 

Budko said Animals in the City is performing a

positive service for the city. He said that the number

of stray dogs is growing drastically in Ukraine but

did not give specific figures.

 

Viktor Svyta is a deputy chief physician at the

Ministry of Public Health. He supports Budko's claims,

saying nearly 100,000 people were bitten by stray dogs

-- many of them rabid -- in Ukraine in 2000.

 

Kurach said stray dogs are put to death in that city

in a different, but no less cruel, manner. " The people

who worked in this [animal-processing] factory told me

that animals are put on a metallic plate [and] slopped

over with water to have better electricity contact.

Then an electrode is put on the nose of an animal, and

at the same time the electricity is turned on. The

animal dies. I have never seen this execution, but I

was told that animals never die instantly and always

suffer, " Kurach said.

 

The bodies of the dead dogs are reprocessed into meal

and fed to chickens and other farm animals.

 

The Brigitte Bardot Foundation, based in France,

campaigns for animal rights around the world. Salem

Sissler from the foundation told RFE/RL that the

situation in Ukraine, as described, is not unique. " It

does not surprise me, " she said. " I saw it in Romania

[several years ago]. I know that they can kill dogs

with electricity. They can beat them to death. It's

very, very brutal, " Sissler said.

 

Budko of Animals in the City said that activists such

as Tarnavska and Sissler are standing in the way of

disease prevention. " If a mayor [of some Western city

gives an order], the order is fulfilled. But here,

protests stand in the way because people like

Tarnavska. She has managed to organize a group of old

women around her, people who are not completely sane,

I would say. This is the team that she works with and

that she uses as her instrument. Of course, from such

sources comes all this secret filming and lies in

European newspapers, " Budko said.

 

But Tarnavska's supporters note that the British Royal

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

recently recognized her for her animal-protection

activities.

 

 

 

 

 

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