Compassion can win over Oppression - International Animal Rights Day
Today is an international Animal Rights Day, a day to raise awareness of the rights of all sentient beings on earth and the appalling conditions humans impose on them on a daily basis. They feel, think and react just as humans do and we are obliged to protect them and ensure their rights are enforced. Be a good voice for the voiceless today!
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to prevent World War II and the concentration camps horrors from being repeated. Only by recognising every human's fundamental rights without concession, could there be any chance of an end to similar tragedies. Thus, the United Nations declared that respect and dignity for human beings are “the foundations for freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
Some years ago, individuals, organisations and associations from all over the world demanded that this should be extended to the other animals with which we share the planet and that December 10 should also be International Animal Rights Day. Humans are also animals, but billions of other sentient beings - capable of feeling and thinking like us - become our victims every year as a result of the species they belong to. The billions of cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, fishes, rabbits, goats, rats, mice, horses, donkeys, camels, dogs, cats, ducks, turkeys, geese and sea creatures who suffer and die at our hands every year.
This day is an opportunity to remind society that freedom, justice and dignity are inclusive terms, since suffering and the desire to live are not confined to a particular race, sex, social position... or species.
In 1970, 22 years after the Declaration of Human Rights by the UN, and more than three decades ago, the term speciesism was coined in order to talk about discrimination of sentient beings due to the species they belong to. Thinking that other animals are inferior and we can use them solely because they were born with fur or feathers is an irrational and unfair prejudice towards other species. Speciesism overlooks our sameness - sentience - and as with racism and sexism, those without power suffer so that someone else can gain.
Animals are sentient beings! They have the nervous system, the brain and the senses respectively!
In 2011 manifesto in Madrid, Spain, was marked International Animal Rights Day.
It is important to understand:
Humans can live a full life without harming other inhabitants of the planet. This requires a change in people's current outlook to abandon the use of animal products as a by-product of cruelty.
This day reminds humans as intelligent beings that compassion can win over oppression, be less self-centred, and take care of the planet and its other full-fledged inhabitants!