SRI LANKA - HOPES AND FEARS

[Guest guest]

One hears a lot about the new humane policies and Mrs.de Silva from the Animal

Welfare Trust announced recently, that within three months the no-kill-bill will

be passed by the parliament. Of course all of us are happy to hear such

statements, but what we heard from our lawyer today casts a shadow over these

hopes: As he read to us the objections, which were filed to our appeal, that the

Kandy Municipal Council should be charged for contempt of courts because by

killing more than 300 dogs end of August, the ongoing ABC-Programme conducted by

SOFA was seriously obstructed, we realised, that these professional dogkillers

like Dr.Jayasinghe, the Kandy Municipal Vet and his supporters, who do not

respect the orders of the courts, will neither respect the higher authorities of

the democratic system. Repeatedly in those objections, it was declared that the

KMC has a right to kill dogs, but the data on rabies, which the Judge had asked

to produce, were missing... while the data already produced by the hospitals

were denied. O.k., these are only words and we will give a proper answer to that

on our next date on 15th of February, but what is much worse... once again their

words were followed by deeds and some dead dogs were found early morning in

front of the market. Unfortunately it happened in the night and we have no

witnesses, but we heard from municipl workers, that it had been done by the KMC.

The purpose must be to demoralize us and force us to stop the programme, but

after having neutered 6600 dogs in the last three years and having requests for

field clinics from all parts of Kandy, we are not going to give up now. As long

as we have a few rupees left on our account, we will continue to sterilize and

hold on to the hopes given to us by the Health Ministry and hopes for kind

people to help with some funds.

 

Thanks to all, who have supported us up to now.

 

Padma and all SOFA members and 250 dogs in our care