By Bakheetah Hakem
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — United Arab Emirates has been subjected to numerous rising cases of pet abandonment as well as animal cruelty. It is often forgotten that animals too have the right of life and freedom making often practices unjust and almost alarming.
As animal rights often remain targeted to criticism and disagreement, the cases of abuse seem to increase by day as rabbits, cats and dogs are found abandoned and left to die outside wealthy communities in Dubai. “Animals are not fashion accessories or toys. They have a life and suffer just like human beings,” said Mel Stones.
During numerous protests held in ,March 2021 against animal cruelty by animal activists, the rights that animals possess were highlighted which include: are not to be used as test subjects for experiments, no breeding of animals for desired result, no killing of animals for food and medicine or clothes, no use of animals for hard labor, no selective breeding, no hunting or using animals for entertainment purposes.
“If a being is the subject-of-a-life then it can be said to have ‘inherent value’. All beings with inherent value are equally valuable and entitled to the same rights. Their inherent value doesn’t depend on how useful they are to the world, and it doesn’t diminish if they are a burden to others.” Says BBC.
It is important to understand why animal rights are needed. We see numerous animals dying on roads as victims of hit and run cases, numerous pets dying subjected to human negligence, massacres of animals as a result of hunting, dog culling leaving behind hundreds of dogs gasping their last breaths and numerous animals facing lifelong diseases as a result of selective breeding. All of these examples go back to the personal interest of humans. It is astonishing to see people disagree on animal rights when they themselves are classified as animals then who is to decide which creatures gets rights and which does not. At the end of the day, they too have the same biological complexity, same conscious, dislikes and emotions.
