Animals, Criminal law, International, Religion, Society

Iranian Dog Torture Video Sparks Outrage

blind_dog250px-flag_of_iransvgWe have previously discussed violence and legal measures targeting dogs by some Muslims who view canines as “unclean.” Even postcards with dogs and service dogs (and here) have raised the ire of some Muslim groups. Now this issue is getting some long-needed attention in Iran after a short film that showed stray dogs being tortured and killed by having acid injected into them.

The video was taken an industrial area of Shiraz, 900 kilometres south of Tehran. The animal activists claimed that those responsible paid $4 for each dog. As with environmentalists in China, I have always had overwhelming respect and admiration for secularists and animal (particularly dog) advocates in Muslim countries. This is more than an impressive commitment to principle but putting your actual life on the line for those principles.

The good news is that the Iranian government is acting on the video. While there was an effort to criminalize the ownership of dogs under Sharia law (and subject dog owners to up to 74 lashed last year), Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar has called for an investigation into the video. While she referred rather mildly to the practice as “an immediate end to unconventional population control method[] for stray dogs,” she did call upon the interior ministry to “deal with the criminals responsible”.

Some Iranian celebrities like Ali Karimi, once a star on Iran’s national football team, posted a picture with his two dogs on Instagram and the message “Dogs are the kindest domestic animals. I hope those who, under any excuse, did this to these animals get what they deserve.”

461 thoughts on “Iranian Dog Torture Video Sparks Outrage”

  1. lim

    The only thing that you said was that Darren Wilson MURDERED someone??????? Oh, is that all? Hate to rain on your uneducated parade, but Darren Wilson KILLED someone; he did not MURDER anyone. Ya see, there is a legal definition associated with the word MURDER. The terms MURDER and KILL are not synonymous. By the way, that means the same.

    Gotta love people who misuse legal terminology, especially with such gusto!

  3. Bob Stone says:

    I’m not going to bother chasing down all your misrepresentations.

    Let me just say that bearing false witness against an innocent man and then attempting to cover your tracks rather than admit you were wrong has been giving a certain scribe on your left shoulder quite the case of writer’s cramp.
    ———————————————–
    Bob
    You are pretty incredible. I said based on my experience with cops and what I have seen them do, I do not believe that Darren Wilson’s account of what happened was truthful.
    I was no witness of the events nor do I know what happened but offered my opinion just as you did. Whatever the scribe writes down on me, yours wrote down for you the same exact thing, for we both assumed something without knowing the facts.
    Your sin is worst however because while the only thing I said was that Darren Wilson is a murderer (he murdered someone), you accused Dorian of lying, Mike of being a thug, the mob of being made up of thugs and libeling me and others claiming we said something we did not say.
    Your scribe has exhausted his writing pad and ink, I wouldn’t wanna be you.

    1. lim/po – you need to remember to change your handle when you leave FFS. You are dead wrong about both Wilson and Brown. There are some people who cannot accept the truth and there is nothing you can do about it. You are one of those.

  4. Karen
    Would I be justified to accuse Pogo of Islamophobia or should I still wait?

    Pogo, don’t tell me this is all the listing you’ve got today? You are letting your hand down man, even bam bam has over listed you in this blog. There has to be more crimes committed by Muslims today?

  5. Annie, glad to see that you know Karen as well as I do, and yes, WadeWillaims, she is a hypocrite, as evidenced by her selective outrage. She is also similarly selective about the concern of women and children, worried about women having less freedom in the Middle east, but totally supportive of the murder en masse of innocent women and children in Palestine.

    1. lim – do you normally use another handle or are you somebodies sockpuppet? Or did you just drop in from FFS to make a mess on the floor and then leave? I do not understand how you could know all these people so well and this is your first day in the sandbox.

  8. For the record, although I.Annie’s photos are cute…the last two are showing expressions of fear and defensiveness on the pups faces….not aggression. In pups it is normal experimentation, in adults it is not…not for any breed from Chihuahua to GSD. My one failure at rescue had that peeled back lips, nose wrinkled expression 90% of the time…she was hopelessly overly defensive. It’s sometimes an insurmountable flaw … none the less I felt very bad about the failure.

  9. Po: “Did your initial post deem Dorian Johnson a liar, Mike Brown a thug and a cop-mugger and the protesters “mob” yes or no?”

    No Po, my initial post barely touched on Dorian Johnson other than to show his his assertion that Brown was shot in the back was not supported by the evidence and that he had a prior conviction for lying to the police.

    I didn’t call Brown a thug, that’s your deflection word of choice. I called him Honey Badger based on his actions in his robbery video — which I also explained was relevant and admissible evidence in determining how Brown acted with Wilson.

    I’m not going to bother chasing down all your misrepresentations.

    Let me just say that bearing false witness against an innocent man and then attempting to cover your tracks rather than admit you were wrong has been giving a certain scribe on your left shoulder quite the case of writer’s cramp.

    1. I. Annie – whoever you are. They get really pi**ed when you misspell their name.

      1. Paul,
        Well, no problem, I’m not afraid of them. I love those beautiful breeds.

  11. I’m sure Prof. Turley is sincere in his outrage regarding the horrific killing of dogs in Iran.

    That’s why I’m so confident that tomorrow we will see a post of markets in Hong Kong or Korea that feature freshly killed dogs ready for consumption.

    1. I. Annie – whoever you are. What is the purpose of the article on the IDF detaining and releasing the mentally challenged young man?

  17. Then there’s these guys in France.
    Are they extremists, or just middle of the road haters?

    “Israeli Channel 10’s reporter in France, Miri Michaeli, used her Facebook page Thursday to publish video documentation of an anti-Semitic assault she experienced in central Paris.
    The incident occurred just as she was about to report on camera about the Germanwings passenger jet disaster in the Alps three weeks ago.

    “The man whose face cannot be seen in the video identifies Hebrew on the microphone, passes the information on to his friends and starts to harass. What happened afterward was much worse. They surrounded me, four or five men, and began to curse me. The word Jew was repeated, too.””

    https://youtu.be/OGiGD7Hmi9o

  18. Karen, because commenters here challenge you, doesn’t mean they are trying to silence you.

  20. http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/video-of-dogs-being-killed-prompts-protests-in-iran-2015-04-20-1.587997

    “A short film showing several stray dogs being brutally killed in Iran that went viral has prompted protests with celebrities joining animal lovers in condemning the cruelty.

    The two-minute video featured the dogs dying after apparently being injected with burning acid in an industrial area of Shiraz, 900km south of Tehran.

    The Fars news agency quoted the animal welfare activist who filmed the undated footage as alleging that those responsible had been paid ‘$4 for the body of each dog.’

    Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar, whose Tehran office was the venue for the biggest protest so far with 500 people on Sunday, criticised the killings and called for an investigation.

    There should be “an immediate end to unconventional population control methods for stray dogs,” she said in a letter to the interior ministry published by the official IRNA news agency on Monday. She urged authorities to “deal with the criminals responsible”.

    Protests have taken place in Shiraz and other cities including Qazvin and Karaj, both west of Tehran.Dog ownership is controversial in Iran. Some families do keep dogs as pets behind closed doors and, especially in more affluent areas, walk them outside.

    A bill drawn up by hardline lawmakers last year would have outlawed dog ownership with offenders liable to up to 74 lashes.

    State television showed Ebtekar addressing the protesters on Sunday at the environmental protection department she heads, telling them “municipalities, under the supervision of city councils,” hold responsibility for pursuing the incident.

    “Hurting animals is unacceptable under any circumstances,” she told the crowd, according to the ISNA news agency.

    Ali Karimi, a retired star of Iran’s national football team who played for Bayern Munich, wrote alongside a picture of his two dogs on Instagram: “Dogs are the kindest domestic animals. I hope those who, under any excuse, did this to these animals get what they deserve.”

    The municipality of Shiraz was besieged by telephone calls from angry citizens after the footage surfaced last week, municipal official Jafar Omidi told Fars.”

    *********************
    I believe all the protestors are Muslims.

Comments are closed.