Animal crusaders are not terrorists

[Guest guest]

http://www.animalfreedom.org/english/column/crusaders.html

 

" Animal crusaders are not terrorists "

By Dirk Boon

in a Dutch Newspaper " Trouw " on october 22, 2003

 

In Boon’s opinion, crusading goes too far where violence against people and

“great destruction” is concerned. But he does understand the radicalisation on

the part of champions of animal rights. “When frustration becomes so high a

McDonalds can go up in flames. I can understand that.”Boon knows a number of

radical crusaders.’ “they are all well-meaning young men.”

In the professor’s view, the animal rights movement is no different to other

freedom movements .“I mean here abortion, euthanasia, nuclear power, the right

to strike. Each time there is a strong call for political intervention, it is

about choices of principle. It leads to struggle which goes on for decades. “

Since the Seventies, Dirk Boon (54), has been concerned with the Legal position

of animals. He graduated and obtained a doctorate on the subject. Since 1997, he

is professor in Utrecht two days a week. To his dismay, Boon is to date the

only lawyer in The Netherlands who is specialised in animal rights. “During the

Eighties I hoped that many would follow me after my doctorate. That animal

rights would develop to become a discipline in itself. Although that has

occurred in the case of environmental rights, animal rights have remained

behind. “

And where Boon remained alone in the academic world, the extraparliamentary

champions of animal rights remained voices calling in the wilderness. Boon: “no

progress whatsoever has been made. A number of distressing things are happening

to animals, such as factory farming.” 130 million animals are kept in factory

farming. They live in abominable circumstances. In the course of the last

thirty years attention has been sought for this problem, to no avail.

The fact they are never heard leads to enormous frustration for some people.

They see animals as their fellow creatures. Cropped up anger drives them over

the limit: they break windows, visit a breeding farm. But is that a crime? It is

a totally different category to knife fighters and drug smugglers. I can

sympathise with these people. There are limits to what you can do to animals.

“These lie, for example, by use of laboratory animals. I am not amazed that many

people are appalled by this. The 7,000 people in our country concerned with the

700,000 laboratory animals we use each year are not giving any information away.

It is almost impossible to ascertain how animal experiments are carried out and

why. Their argument: ‘We have no desire to expose ourselves to terror’”.

,,The same applies to livestock farming. In this sector 130 million animals are

kept, but when driving through The Dutch countryside, you see no evidence of it.

Livestock farmers have made themselves invisible. Nobody is allowed in the

stables because of danger of infection. They say: ‘the consumer wants affordable

meat, and the consumer wants animal-friendly products and less disease among

animals.’’ Without openness, these two parties become incredibly angry with each

other”.

Boon considers the breakdown in communication to have disastrous consequences.

“Radicalisation automatically comes about in this way. But it would be going too

far to call it fundamentalism. Although Volkert van der G. has become the

epitome of all that is evil, his way of working for Environment Offensive

(Milieu Offensief) demands respect. In his short career he started 1200 legal

proceedings, of which he won 90. He made no friends with local and provincial

authorities in this way, but they had made a mess of it themselves.”

 

Animal crusaders are not terrorists.

Violence by protestors is accepted by the community as an unpleasant fact. And

football hooligans do not have to pay for the damage they bring about. But

damage done by animal crusaders is suddenly labeled “terrorist”.

Animal crusading is not terrorism. The Grote van Dale dictionary describes

terrorism thus: ‘committing violence (individual or collective attacks,

kidnapping, destruction) in order to demoralise the population and so to attain

a political goal’. In the modern sense of the word, terrorism mainly means

undermining democracy. There can be no talk of this in the case of animal

crusading.

I have done research into social and political actions after the Second World

War. Many of these actions are accompanied by destruction. Football hooliganism

is a good example. The Ajax bus was recently set on fire. I don’t need to

elaborate on the damage done by the squatters movement. I remember distinctly

the state of siege which was the order of the day in Amsterdam during the Provo-

period. Rows, rebellion, crusading, protests, all social and political

offshoots. Destruction in Rome during the European Convention. Destruction in

other parts of the World during World consultation about globalisation.

If the majority of Parliament judges animal crusaders to be terrorists, as

became obvious recently, then I can only conclude that football hooligans and

other rebels must also be included in this category.

Fact is that in the past, no hard measures were taken against all forms of

vandalism. If supporters demolish the same football train every weekend, why do

these hooligans not have to pay for the damage? If hooliganism requires inset

of so many policeman on Sundays, why does the football club concerned not have

to pay for the extra police activities? That doesn’t happen – at least not in my

opinion – and still animal crusaders should be charged and treated as

terrorists?

In a communication (Podium, 7 October), the VVD-member of Parliament, Anouchka

van Miltenburg, awakes the impression that I approve of violence arising from

social frustration. That is certainly not the case. She refers to an interview

with me in Trouw (3 October) but the first lines of that interview state: no

violence and little destruction. I do not close my eyes, however, to the fact

that many protests are accompanied by destruction and violence. Such actions

seem to be acceptable, provided they are conducted with moderation and everyone

seems to turn a blind eye to the material damage. I have never heard of the

violators of commemorative monuments being followed and charged. The same

applies to the Moroccan youths who recently left a trail of destruction

throughout Amsterdam-West immediately following the commemoration of a Moroccan

boy who had been shot and killed by a policeman. In this society, this sort of

destruction is obviously tolerated by police and the Pub

lic Prosecutor. It is just a fact of life. Nobody gets upset at the fact that

the independent tobacconist is not compensated by his insurance company for

damage and that he is too afraid – for fear of repercussions – to claim the

costs of the damage from the perpetrators. We clearly need to be brave and

carry the costs of material damage ourselves

Many social questions are solved eventually. That can take a year and sometimes

much longer. There has never been an adequate solution found for football

hooliganism which has been around since the Seventies.

Animal welfare problems have increased both in quality and numbers during the

last forty years. In the Netherlands 150 million animals are kept, almost ten

per member of the population. For far and away most of these animals, their

welfare leaves much to be desired. The main problems lie in farming of

production animals, which counts some 125 million at this point in time. Factory

farming should be seen as a dead-end street. It has provided the farmers

concerned no lasting, economic position, the landscape has been destroyed, the

problem with manure is as large as ever, animal fodder needs to be imported from

countries far abroad, which has been produced on a surface six times as large as

the Dutch agricultural acreage, and animal welfare remains as poor as ever.

There is constant tension between producers and consumers, and at the same

everyone has had enough of the breakout and combating of infectious diseases in

animals in recent years.

Most people are fed up of this situation. In their houses, however, 800,000

thoroughbred dogs are to be found, the majority of whom are afflicted with

serious hereditary abnormalities. Painful defects which make them sick. And then

there are all those people who are concerned about the fate of the 700,000

laboratory animals used annually in The Netherlands and about the state of the

environment.

Via my University Chair, I am often approached by people who are emotionally

totally distressed at the conditions in which so many groups of animals are kept

in our society. I myself am not lead by these sentiments, but I recognize very

well the frustration in various layers of society. The ‘human-animal question”

has only increased during the last forty years and to a certain extent I can

understand how so many people have become frustrated at the many problems

occurring with animals. If aggression arises and is released at the loss of a

football match or other such trivial matter, then I am certainly not surprised

that material damage is caused during crusades by seriously frustrated animal

lovers. Let me put it more strongly: I am surprised that these actions are so

small-scaled and only take place incidentally. If the Parliament Building should

be stormed tomorrow and held under siege for considerable time by animal

crusaders, it would not surprise me at all. Please

note: I do not approve of this, I am only registering and while doing so I

note that so much aggression is accepted in our society as being self-evident.

The term 'terrorists' should be reserved for people and groups of people who

attempt to undermine Democracy and her culture by means of destruction and

violence. In our society, besides, various forms of violence and destruction are

to be seen, conducted individually or in an organized manner, which need to be

settled within the normal framework of criminal justice. This also includes

animal crusading.

 

[since the Seventies, Dirk Boon (54), has been concerned with the Legal position

of animals. He graduated and obtained a doctorate on the subject. Since 1997, he

was professor Animal Rights at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands.]

 

Thank you for your compassion !

With best regards,

Debasis Chakrabarti

Compassionate Crusaders Trust

http://www.animalcrusaders.org