Animal Rights by Vjosa Shaqiri (15) & Vlora Qorri (15), Kosovo

Animal Rights

by Vjosa Shaqiri (15) & Vlora Qorri (15), Kosovo

All creatures in the world have their own rights, including their freedom.
Freedom is a big word that is harder to achieve than to enjoy, but usually we can get anything if we really want it. The worst is when you really want something but the others forbid you to do it. You try but some forces that are bigger stop you. Is this what we are doing with animals?
There are a lot of people that at least have tried to give an answer to this question. For example:

''In suffering, the animals are our equals''
Peter Singer

''The time will come when people such as I will look upon the murder of (other)

animals as they look upon the murder of human beings''
Leonardo Da Vinci

''I’m in favor of animal rights as well as human rights . That is the way of a whole

human being''
Abraham Lincoln

Also, there are a lot of international and private organizations as: “S.P.C.A.”,”P.E.T.A”, 'Center for animals welfare & anthrozoology’,”ETCO”, ”ABS”.etc... which support and speak for the rights of animals.

As campers we had the opportunity to see two real examples of animal treatment. We have seen the “dog show,” where we could see how useful police dogs can be .They can protect and attack but they also can be killed. All of us have seen that they’ve been trained very well to protect or attack people but what about them: have the dogs been trained to protect themselves? Anyway, they were great and we adore them.

Horses, elephants, dogs, camels – we have seen all of them in a circus. It was very good but also very painful. We really enjoyed the show until an elephant came to the stage that, it seems, was taught to do unnatural movements only for us. The horses were not in a better situation either. What does Zoltan think about seven men riding one horse? To him it was obvious that the horse was suffering.

The philosopher Jeremy Bentham said that “we believe that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering.” The question is not, “Can they reason” nor “can they talk?”, but “Can they suffer?”

If you would not eat a dog why eat a pig? Dogs and pigs have the same capacity to feel pain but it is prejudice based on the species that allows us to think of an animal as a companion and the other one as dinner. The founder of P.E.T.A, an international organization Ingrid Newkirk said “when it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness and fear, “A rat is a pig, is a dog, is a boy. Each one values his or her life and fight the knife” We have to accept them as members of the world and try not to cause suffering to them, we are human beings and we have the ability to be kind.
We have interviewed some of the kids in our camp for this topic. All the kids accept that the animals are not respected as they deserve to be.

All of them have claimed that people are the ones who mistreat animals most. Szekely Zoltan, a boy from Romania said that “between the animals fighting is a natural fact, but when human beings fight against the animals is not fair!” Vanja Jovičić from Croatia, speaking on the question of whether animal rights are respected in her country, said: “In my country they don’t respect rights of animals. There are many animals (dogs, cats) on the street. There are no people to care about them. Some of them take unnecessary dogs, put them in a packet and through them in the river.”

To live in freedom, to have a secure place to live, to not be hurt, to have enough food to eat: these are the conditions that animals deserve to live in. Those with this opinion were Sandra, Sergej, Rudina, Danica, Irina, Ivana, Erna, Lilla, and Vanja.

About the show that we have seen in circus, Arber from Kosovo and Ivana from Serbia think that they use animals to make people laugh, which is not right. Danica Cvorovic from Montenegro said that she couldn’t watch it. Zoltan, the Romanian boy, liked the show. Lilla, a 14-year-old girl from Hungary thinks that animals are not respected in the circus. These were some opinions of some kids about the show.

Now let me list some of the answers about the question “what did they think about using animals for personal benefits?” Ivana Zivkovic from Montenegro said, “that’s not right, [the animals] should free. Adrienn from Hungary ‘’very bad’’ Rudina Morina from Kosova thinks that sometimes it is better to be vegetarian to protect animals. We have another opinion from Ivana Mandic, who said ‘’This is alright, everyone uses animals for personal benefits‘’. Vanja Jovicic from Croatia said ‘’I don’t like it when the human is intelligent enough to fly to the moon and make atomic bombs [but still can’t find a way to live without exploiting animals]; he has to find another way to make money.Sandra Bestercan, 13 years old, like most of her friends thinks that it “is not right to use the animals for personal benefits.”

Also we have make an interview with a pretty woman that works in the camp, Szécsi Zsuzsa. She has lived for a long time at Lake Balaton. She told us that in her country the respect and rights of the animals are becoming more and more respected, and she also told us that are some organizations that works for this, for example the ”Blue Cross” and the ”White Cross”.
We were really interested in one question about other visitors to the camp like us. We wanted to know that if they like this kind of shows with animals. She said that most of the visitors that come here like the shows but there also are some of them who don’t like the shows, the way they treat the animals, and the animals’ conditions. She thinks that what people do to animals, the way they treat them, should be done back to them, because it’s not a kind way of behaving and people deserve it. Finally, her opinion on using the animals for personal benefits she added: “It depends how, some people have a lot of cows and it’s true they have benefits from them ,but they keep them on good conditions."

People are different and of course they have different opinions and that is natural. Animals in a way are linked very much with our life and absolutely true that we have benefits from them but some people don’t accept this ,they make laws against them. “With no contrary opinion I will go ahead and make this change” said Charles Patterson an author of the bestseller Our treatment of animals and the Holocaust. We as humble journalists are repeating this because we have to try to make changes for a better world. While we can not control the situation and be certain that things are going to be different we learned how to take action to make small and important steps to influence the changes that we want to see.