Day: July 5, 2020

General News

Greece: the misery of Santorini’s donkeys

On the Greek island of Santorini, donkeys and mules are used as taxis to carry tourists up and down more than 600 steps to the old town of Firá several times a day.

Despite international outrage when an eyewitness report published by PETA in 2018 revealed that the animals were denied water and shade and many had painful wounds, a new PETA video exposé reveals that the suffering and abuse continue.

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Santorini officials refused to run adverts from PETA which highlight the suffering of donkeys and mules used as “taxis” on the Greek island.

Massive ad campaign fights to stop cruel donkey rides in SantoriniImage: PETA

 

PETA Germany has refused to be silenced and has bombarded neighboring ports, ferries, taxis, buses, billboards, and cargo bikes with a powerful campaign.

Over 100 adverts reading “Help stop cruelty: please don’t ride the donkeys and mules!” are now visible in the popular Greek coastal towns of Rafina and Piraeus.

The campaign follows a recent PETA eyewitness exposé revealing that handlers drag animals down steps and whip and hit them with sticks to make them continue walking.

Open Sores and Bloody Injuries

Donkeys and mules were observed suffering from open sores, raw skin, and bloody injuries caused by their ill-fitting and makeshift saddles. Some animals were forced to wear tight muzzles with sharp wire ends that could easily injure them as well as humans.

santorini sewl mit maulkorb

Under these laws, animals must have access to water and protection from the weather, but many of those used for rides are tied to a wall or rail for hours in the blistering summer sun with no access to water whatsoever. Some try desperately to find shade.

These conditions are illegal but apparently tolerated by the authorities.

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Environmental, General News

Brazil: Amazon fires at 13-year high for June.

Brazil

 

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Click on the following link to see a disturbing video of a reporter flying over the devastation:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-53262565

Amazon fires at 13-year high for June

 

Fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose by almost 20% in June – a 13-year high for the month, according to government data.

With such an increase at the start of the dry season, there are concerns that this year’s fires could surpass 2019’s disastrous blazes.

Activists say the coronavirus pandemic is exacerbating the problem.

They believe arson is likely to be even less monitored while authorities are stretched.

Many forest fires in the country are started deliberately by illegal loggers and farmers wanting to quickly clear ground.

Brazil has the world’s second-highest coronavirus death toll, after the US, and there are also concerns that increased smoke could have a damaging effect on the breathing of virus patients.

 

 

In June, the country’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) recorded 2,248 fires using satellite imagery, as opposed to 1,880 fires in June 2019.

The burning usually increases throughout July, August and September.

“We cannot allow the 2019 situation to repeat itself,” Mauricio Voivodic, executive director of the World Wildlife Fund NGO in Brazil, told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper, accusing the government of inaction.

Last year’s fires peaked in August, with 30,901 – threefold the number for the same period the previous year.

The 2019 fires led to protests domestically and internationally, with threats of financial penalties from foreign governments, and broad condemnation of President Jair Bolsonaro’s environmental policies.

The president has been criticised for slashing the Ministry of the Environment’s funding, and encouraging business over conservation.

 

BBC analysis in 2019 showed that a sharp drop in fines for environmental violations during his administration had coincided with the increase in fires.

 

However, the president has consistently rejected criticism from abroad. “Certain countries, instead of helping … behaved in a disrespectful manner and with a colonialist spirit,” he said in September, rejecting the “misconception” that the Amazon is the lungs of the world.

The Amazon – which spans multiple South American countries but is 60% in Brazil – is a vital carbon store that slows down the pace of global warming.

 

 

It is home to about three million species of plants and animals, as well as some one million indigenous people.

 

Last year, the BBC reported how an area of Amazon rainforest roughly the size of a football pitch is now being lost every single minute, according to satellite data.

 

Scientists say it could be close to “the tipping point“, when its nature completely changes.

This will happen when total deforestation reaches between 20% and 25% – which could be in the next 20 or 30 years.

 

Farm Animals

India, Nagaland: end of dog meat trade

Dog meat trade Nagaland in India announces the end

Hundefleisch: So grausam werden die Tiere bis zu ihrem Tod gequält ...

In a groundbreaking decision, the Indian government of Nagaland ended the brutal dog meat trade.

The decision announced today by the cabinet will end the import, trade, and sale of live dogs and dog meat.

Animal welfare organizations have been campaigning for years to end the Indian dog meat trade and welcome this decision as an important turning point in ending the cruelty of the Indian trade in hidden dog meat.

It is estimated that around 30,000 dogs are smuggled into Nagaland annually, where they are sold in living markets and beaten to death with wooden clubs.

Vietnams Hundefleisch-Debatte | Asien | DW | 27.06.2015

 

The animal rights activists’ campaign to end the dog meat trade started in 2016 with an investigation that revealed shocking video footage of dogmeat death pits in Nagaland.

Dogs were beaten to death in front of each other and beaten several times in protracted and painful deaths.

Alokparna Sengupta, Managing Director of Humane Society International, India, said: “The suffering of dogs in Nagaland has long cast India in a dark shadow, and this news marks an important turning point in ending the cruelty of the Indian dog meat trade.
Our own investigation in Nagaland found that terrified dogs have suffered horrific deaths in some of the worst inhumanities to animals HSI / India has ever seen. And the dogs we saved from this trade over the years had to learn to trust people again after the cruel treatment they endured. “

Hundefleisch Indien 3

Dog meat is banned in India by the 2011 Food Products Standard and Additives.

However, this is insufficiently enforced, and in the states of Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura, and Arunachal Pradesh thousands of dogs are used every year illegally captured from the street or stolen from houses and cruelly transported from neighboring states in burlap to be brutally slaughtered for consumption to be beaten to death.

Continue reading “India, Nagaland: end of dog meat trade” →