This Is How They Do It!
Yuri Luzhkov, Moscow‘s former mayor, stated in May of 2008 that he was supporting humane policies towards the regulation of the number of homeless animals. However, reality proved that the verbal statement entailed no action: animals would be captured in the streets and sent to unfinished shelters, where they would die because of poor housing conditions.
The same year, Luzhkov’s deputy Pavel Biryukov offered to replace the program of sterilization of homeless animals to their extermination in municipal shelters. The black list included quarantined and sterilized dogs. Animal rights activists said that such a change in the law would only legalize animal slaughter.
There is direct connection between the cultural and moral level of the society and the attention that it pays to issues of protection of animals. The culture of eating dog meat has been prospering in Moscow lately. A journalistic investigation conducted by one of Russian TV channels revealed a whole chain of restaurants serving dog meat in the south-west of Moscow.
The attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church to four-legged creatures is terrible too. On October 27, 2007, a priest of Russia’s iconic Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius ordered to pack over 30 cats in sacks and take them to a landfill where they were bulldozed.
During the festival of balloons held in Moscow’s Tushino in 2008, several lambs were publicly slaughtered for meat. The festival was conducted with the blessing of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
In 2007, a priest of the Temple of St. Matrona in Moscow’s center ordered a security guard to beat a puppy who ran onto the territory of the church. The guard broke the puppy’s spine.
Atrocious attitude to animals prospers in Ukraine too. Ukrainian animal rights activists won the support of UEFA after their numerous attempts to reach the national authorities had been left without attention. In Ukraine, homeless animals are destroyed barbarically. Dog catchers use special syringe guns to kill homeless pets. The poison that they used is called ditiline - a drug that paralyzes respiratory muscles.
In Ukraine’s Lisichansk, local authorities purchased a mobile crematorium for 198,000 hryvnas. It looks like a field kitchen with a chimney. The crematorium is operated by a driver, an operator and a catcher “armed” with a syringe gun. They paralyze animals and throw them into the container. As soon as they collect 40 kilos, they burn the paralyzed dogs and cats while they are still alive.
Last year, the Ukrainian president, the prime minister and the opposition leader received dozens of letters from foreign animal rights activities, who urged them to immediately stop the uncontrollable and brutal extermination of homeless animals. Activists from other countries sent many similar messages to UEFA headquarters because Ukraine is hosting Euro 2012 football championship.
Europe is ready to boycott Euro 2012 in Ukraine. Activists, with famous people among them, are ready to organize meetings of protest near Ukrainian embassies in EU countries if nothing changes for the better.
Director of Euro 2012, Martin Cullen, told Ukrainian officials that he condemned barbaric methods of solving the problem with homeless pets. The official stated that the government of Ukraine should take the problem under control because the brutal methods used against the animals contradict to European norms.
Filed Under: Animal & Plant Life
