“Center for Animal Welfare Legal Protection”
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Letter-comment  Dear Mr. Ilyinsky,I'm rather surprised by the text I received from you. Since I know you as a protector of animals' interests, I could not believe that it was you reiterating the standing rubbish about "packs of aggressive dogs" and "animals thrown out into the streets". I could ask you dozens of questions on your text. For example, what do you mean by the wonderful "records of rationality" allegedly beaten by the numbers of homeless animals in Moscow? Taken literally, this means that those numbers are absolutely adequate to the city capacity, yet I doubt you meant just that... Anyway, let's not waste our time on verbalism. I offer you what I always offer the persecutors of the dogs that are their own masters - a bet. You give me the habitat of a horde of man-eater dogs, better still - the horde itself. Before your own eyes (you will be watching from a safe distance, naturally), I'll make my way through this pack of dogs, having no means of self-defense or treats about me. Should the dogs damage my clothes or injure me, I'll willingly place any text of your choice in our magazine. If not, you stop mailing this abomination to the editorial boards. I'll even pardon you for the things already published. Deal? A minor reservation: if I don't receive a response to this proposal, I'll consider myself to be in a position to use the texts sent to me at my own discretion. Giving the author's full name, too. To complete the picture, a few words about myself. I'm not an innate avid dog lover (such people are not uncommon, some I know personally, but I'm not one of them). I don't know any magic word and until now I'm unable to overcome childish fear, when encountering an unfamiliar dog jumping out of nowhere with a bark. Like yourself, obviously I prefer cats, and I've known quite a lot of them, both home-grown and going about by themselves. Many of these creatures died a violent death. More often than not, they were overrun by vehicles, pretty often, it was a premeditated murder by humans, sometimes the cats were torn apart by wild animals (in particular two male kittens of my own cat, which is still alive, were eaten up by foxes). Of all the cats that I knew, only one male cat was killed by dogs, and that happened not in Moscow, but in a country-cottage settlement, where territory-wise relations among the animals are quite different. One thing I know for certain: I never saw "hundreds of corpses that people were tired of burying...", etc. I don't mean to say that unattached dogs are quite safe to the cats: after all, the cats, too, catch birds, which does not prevent me from liking both. Sincerely yours, G. Ushakov, Magazine Observer 30.01.2004 Dear Mr. Ushakov, I'm responding to your letter with great interest. You refer to me as a "persecutor of the dogs that are their own masters", but in my articles I appeal to the authorities "to drive" all homeless dogs and cats into normal civilized state orphanages so as to save those animals. To attain this goal, it is necessary to prove to the authorities that city streets as habitats for stray animals are bad to both the people and the animals and that packs of dogs roaming around the city cannot be regarded as a natural phenomenon for the city ecosystem. You argue that urban environment to homeless cats and dogs is happiness of liberty and freedom, yet at the end of your letter you disprove this by saying that you've seen a large number of dead cats: overrun by vehicles, killed by man or by wild animals. But, once a person has seen this is unable to put up with it, he becomes a convinced zooprotectionist for the rest of his life. It is to prevent the occurrence of such unfortunate cases in the future that we (and hundreds of other people) have abandoned everything, making unthinkable sacrifices (e.g. my wife gave up painting, which had been the meaning of her life) and have only been dealing with protection and rescuing of homeless animals. However, the situation only becomes worse every day. Your proposal to prove safety of dogs to people through betting stands no criticism. You seem to reduce the problem to a stance whereby protection of people against the dogs is a personal affair of each individual as if alleging that "if I can make my way through a horde of homeless dogs unharmed, it means that there is no problem as far as I am concerned". But the dogs attack people selectively, and the fact of attack, in addition to horde parameters (number of dogs, habitat, aggressivity of the horde leader) depends on parameters of a person being attacked: height, sex, age, gait, movements, objects in the person's hands that are likely to scare the dogs, person's psychology, person's odor, person's being alert to an encounter with the dogs, etc. It is exactly such an approach that violates the Constitution: the state must guarantee all its citizens the right to life/health protection and to favorable environment irrespective of the aforesaid factors. Still, if we do want to carry out a really trustworthy experiment, on the strength of which it would be possible to draw a conclusion regarding the safety of dogs in respect of the people, we should take a fairly large sampling of absolutely different individuals in terms of age, sex, all other data (psychology, anthropometrics) and stage this experiment at different locations and not just with a single pack of dogs. However, at present, there is no need for such an experiment as it has been accomplished already. As a result, according to the data communicated by the "MK" and "Vesti": in Signalny Proezd, Moscow, one person is killed, no less than 10 are bitten severely. Journalists of "Vesti", who visited the scene and filmed the pack of dogs, compare the area with a front of military operations. You said you know me as a zooprotectionist. I dare you to ask me what results in zoo protection we have attained. I'll tell you: none. The authorities in this country will keep ignoring the sufferings of animals for dozens of years to come. Here are some examples: For the last two years, we have been reporting to the Government about walling up live cats in the basements all over Moscow. We've filed a 10-page long statement to the General Prosecutor's Office. The result is nil. As before, going by job descriptions is more important to the staff of single customer management boards than the lives of animals. Even when the corpses of kittens suspended on pipes in the basements were found, we were unable to initiate proceedings to look into cases of cruel treatment of animals. Militia generally laugh, when people approach them on issues like this. For two months every day we struggled to free around 20 cats in the attic of a house at Podrezkovo Village. The cats had been locked up by the house managers with no food or water, and were under the guardianship of the 15-year old Sergey Melnichuk. We sent out our complaints to all: from the local militia to President and State Duma. As a result, as soon as we managed to remove the cats from the attic and take them to the hitherto safe basement, all of them were poisoned in that basement the following week. The problem is that because the numbers of animals in the streets are enormous, it is impossible to protect them. The only solution is to force the Government to plug the source of animals streaming into the streets: by restricting the breeding of animals and placing all homeless animals in orphanages that the authorities, naturally, must begin to set up. This is the only correct humane and civilized way that resolved this problem in Europe. We have long been convinced that appealing to the Government trying to make it sympathetic towards animals is no use. Our country adamantly ignores and refuses to sign both the Federal Law and international agreements on protection of animals. As a result, we are unable to present any serious arguments to the authorities to force them to protect animals. Therefore, we have come to this conclusion: unless the problem is handled in terms of violation of people's constitutional rights (which is now vividly illustrated by the situation with packs of dogs), the authorities will never start tackling it in a civilized manner. It is when the problem ceases to be one of zoo protection and becomes a problem of human rights that it may be embarrassing to the authorities, because human rights are protected by the Constitution and laws that cannot be ignored. In my last article, I may be the only person, for the first time to be seriously and convincingly raising a matter of compensation by the state of expenses incurred by the guardians of cats and dogs, when they volunteer to foster or feed the animals. This should also make the Government start thinking: what is cheaper to it- pay the benefit to all the guardians or set up orphanages? I possess the data on the situation with homeless animals in Moscow that no other organization has: we supervise the network of the guardians of homeless cats. Information on hundreds of cats torn apart by stray dogs in Moscow we receive from the guardians. If necessary, I'm ready to submit such data in any court. Each cat has a guardian standing behind it. If the authorities allow cats to be exterminated by dogs, this is no zoo protection. As for cats attacking mice and birds, this is a matter for the future. We consider it our duty to prevent cruelty among any living creatures, where possible. For you to be an earnest and honest opponent of my stance and impact it, I must give an honest answer to all your "dozens of questions": only then we shall find a way to the truth and understanding. Feel free to send me these questions via the Internet, or to write an article. I shall respond to your article publicly by writing my own. I am sure, all will benefit from this. Sincerely yours, Yevgeny Ilyinsky. 30.01.2004 |