While we all are busy celebrating the joyful Christmas month, it is time to remind ourselves of how we have been mistreating and killing these animals.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The General assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10th December 1948 to prevent World War II. A few years back, individuals, organizations, and associations from all over the world demanded that this should be extended to the other sentient beings as well with whom we share our planet, and that led to marking 10th December as International Animal Rights Day.
Celebration or Killing/Abusing of Innocent beings
While everyone is busy celebrating the joyful month of December as Christmas is approaching, it is time to think and remind ourselves of how we have been mistreating and killing these animals for hundreds of years, whether it is for meat, fun, entertainment, art or in the name of religion. Even though humans are also one of the animal species, billions of other sentient beings like cows, dogs, elephants, pangolins, rhinoceros, horses, goats, monkeys, fish, silkworms, pigs, camels, sea creatures, etc. suffer and die at our hands every year.
Animals are suffering
We have been neglecting how animals feel pain, emotions, and even fuel up their sufferings day by day through various irresponsible activities:
- We ride Horses and Camels for fun, hit/injure them to run fast in races to earn money or ride them in the name of culture at weddings;
- We keep Cows in the dark, dingy, tight rooms to make money ignoring their health conditions there and tear the calves away from their screaming mothers;
- We keep Elephants, Pangolins, Rhinoceros and other wild animals captive in the name of livelihood to make our lives easier, for entertainment or making medicines;
- We kill Silkworms and Silk moths to cater to a vain fashion need of humans just because silk cloth is considered one of the luxurious material;
- We use Monkeys (Macaques) for entertainment and also in unjustified lab tests that kill them in invasive, painful, and terrifying experiments. These primates are imprisoned in laboratories and go through traumatic procedures majorly under five experiments:
- Pharmaceutical tests
- Vaccine tests
- Military experiments and training
- Maternal- deprivation experiments
- Invasive brain experiments
Animals too need freedom, dignity, respect, and justice
International Animal Rights Day is an excellent opportunity to remind everyone in this society that freedom, dignity, respect, and justice are comprehensive to all living beings because the desire to live a life worth living is not confined to a particular species, race, or sex. It is the right of every living being to live freely, and it is our responsibility to let them do so. As was rightly said by Mahatma Gandhi, “The more helpless the creature, the more that it is entitled to protection by man- from the cruelty of man.”
Don’t leave them on roads to live like an orphan!
Don’t hit them to vent out your frustration!
Don’t materialize these innocent animals!
Don’t kill them for your lust and fantasies!
Come forward and join hands with us to fight against this injustice. Be the generation that ends animal exploitation because after all, we have more to learn from animals than animals have to learn from us.