ZOOSADISM: Videos show hunters torturing before killing brown bears in Turkey
Ahmet Kemal Senpolat, president of animal rights group Haytap, said: The videos are terrible and really show, in our opinion, these hunters taking pleasure in torturing animals.
FRANCE 24 THE OBSERVERS: In recent weeks, people across Turkey have expressed shock and anger after two videos emerged showing hunters killing or torturing bears. Animal rights organizations say that the laws meant to protect bears aren’t strict enough and that the small number of hunters in the country act in impunity. The two videos were circulating on WhatsApp before someone alerted animal rights group Haytap (The Federation for animal rights – Turkey), which reposted the videos on their Facebook page on July 9 and 12.
The first video shows an injured bear who has blood all over his head and upper body. In the video, you can hear two men speaking. “Attack, attack!” one tells a dog. A dog runs at the bear and bites it. Another dog joins in. At one point, the footage shows a hunter with a rifle just a few meters away from the bear, but he doesn’t put the animal out of its misery. Animal rights group Haytap says that the incident occurred in May in the village of Arhavi, which is located in the northeastern province of Artvin.
The second video shows two men holding up a dead bear. They laugh as they hit its head and call out insults. According to Haytap, that video was also likely filmed about two months ago in the village of Agaçseven in the northeastern province of Trabzon. At the start of the video, one of the hunters references Ramadan, which went from April 23 to May 23 this year. The two videos garnered hundreds of thousands of views on social media…
Haytap filed a complaint on the hunters and hopes that the authorities will set a precedent by handing them tough prison sentences… Ahmet Kemal Senpolat, a lawyer and the president of Haytap, stated: ‘The videos are terrible and really show, in our opinion, these hunters taking pleasure in torturing animals… We hope that, this time, the laws will be upheld and that these individuals will be handed serious prison sentences, not just fines, which is common in cases where people abuse or torture domestic animals like cats and dogs’. SOURCE…
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