(MY) letter on dog cruelty

[Guest guest]

Of doggone stick-y savagery- Malaysiakini

 

Shenaaz Khan

Mar 22, 10

7:53pm

 

 

I refer to the letter *Ghastly animal abuse at Kepong KTM

station<http://malaysiakini.com/letters/126798>

*.

 

Man, I can assure you, is a nasty creature. He demands, he deceives, he

destroys. And since the beginning of civilisation, he's been propagating

this *veni, vidi, vici* behaviour ubiquitously. In the latest episode of the

'Malaysia, Truly Beastly' series, this brutish barbarism has yet again been

exposed extravagantly.

 

The above letter revealed a shackled dog with a mouthful of stick! Yes! A

stick! To my surprise, I wasn't surprised. With the butchery of babies, the

crushing of civil rights and legislation on lexicon, it seems almost natural

to fetter a dog to a fence and feed it some timber.

 

Also not blood-curdling shocking is the complete and absolute show of apathy

by those who bared witness to this gruesome scene. Save for the benevolent

individuals who made the frantic report, a howling and hemorrhaging living

being seemed to not bother the vast commuting commuters that day.

 

It was after all just a dog. A fang-filled, diseased-ridden,

faeces-producing, oxygen-stealing dog. Its eventual death would be a mere

kitchen matter to these folk.

 

So what has become of this country, one might ask. Are its people as

heartless as this incident suggests? Or are we as Allah-fearing as we

piously proclaim? All religions, mind you, preach custodianship of the world

we inhabit; a world that includes animals.

 

But it is shamefully clear that while we human beings are religiously taken

up with heavenly fooleries, we continually treat our animals like hell. We

doggedly refuse to concern ourselves with something as pedestrian as the

welfare of the animals in our 'custody'.

 

We would much rather train them for our sadistic amusement; slaughter them

for our gastronomical indulgence and subject them to torture for our

'security'. Hence, as is with most animal cruelty cases in this country, the

chorus of outrage will begin, torrential tears will be wept and animal

activism will be re-awakened.

 

And with a modicum of luck, these Malaysian mindset-manufactured monsters

will get a verbal walloping. But justice will not be served for this poor

dog. One must be delusional to believe otherwise.

 

The circumstances surrounding the stick-shoving, shackling and subsequent

release of the dog still elude me. But what has become damningly apparent is

that Malaysia needs a fresh soul.

*

 

The writer is president, Malaysian Animal Welfare Society, secretary,

Petpositive and a member of the Canine Advisory Teams within Majlis

Bandaraya Petaling Jaya (MBPJ) and Majlis Perbandaran Klang (MPK).

*