Animal Rights and Punishment of Animal Abusers

At the same time, with raising public culture, the occurrence of some cases of animal cruelty can be prevented, but in fact the raising of public culture is an unwritten law which can only be implemented through education, and this requires the existence of suitable laws. Based on people’s social demands, the government has placed this process in its working agenda, and one of the important actions taken is the writing of the fight against animal cruelty draft bill.

Removal of legal vacuums in protection of animals
Stressing that in Islam, the protection of animals and shunning animal abuse has been reaffirmed plenty of times, the head of the Parliament’s Environment Fraction, MohammadReza Tabesh speaking to Arman newspaper regarding the situation of the protection of animals said, “To-date numerous meetings have been held by the Environment and Sustainable Development Fraction of the Parliament with environmental activists in NGOs on animal rights. Under these circumstances, the Environment Fraction of the Parliament welcomes the views of people on protection animal rights more than before.” He continued, “With the transparency of animals conditions in the Environment Fraction we can write new and preventive laws and with the cooperation of NGOs and environmental activists and the Environment Fraction of the Parliament we can hope that we will not see legal vacuums with regards to the protection of animal rights.”

Last year the Environmental Protection Organization, drafted the fight against animal cruelty bill with the help of environmental organizations and animal lovers, and presented it to the government. Currently the animal cruelty ban draft legislation has been presented to the Parliament in the form of amendment of the Islamic Criminal Code and an addendum of five clauses to article 679 of the said law. The said draft has been sent to the Judiciary by the government and it is to be reviewed in the open session of the Parliament in the near future. This draft is to criminalise cruelty to animals committed by perpetrators.

The director general of the Office of the Protection and Management of Hunting and Fishing of the Environmental Protection Organization Ali Teymouri, in relation to the situation of the animal protection draft bill said: “animal cruelty, has public and private aspects and according to the law, animals have rights the violation of which is criminalised in accordance with the law.” According to this draft bill, the duties of various departments and bodies are specified.

It must be said that social culture building is another measure that must be taken into consideration by specialised bodies and civil society and the people so that a more suitable basis can be provided for the protection of animal rights. Prevention of animal cruelty must be institutionalised from childhood year and necessary education be presented to students in schools. Also the national media can bring to attention this problem in children’s programmes so that children recognise animal rights and eventually see the eradication of this problem.

Although it is necessary that protective laws must be more completed and the law must applied to perpetrators of animal abuse, but this method is not the only preventive solution in the fight against the animal cruelty problem, but this problem must be solved through suitable culture building in a deeply rooted way. With culture building with regards to respecting animal rights more success can be achieved in this regard more than before. With these measures animal rights, both domestic and wild, will be recognised by individuals. In this regard through utilisation of the capacity of human networks for the protection of the environment and wildlife in an orderly and continuous way so that people can learn how to approach wildlife correctly.

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