Day: March 11, 2002

PETA Wants to Run Anti-Fur Ad in Great Britain

Before the Sept. 11 attack, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals commissioned a particularly violent anti-fur advertisement that it planned to show in the United States. After the Sept. 11 attack, PETA shelved those plans but did display the ad on its web site. Now, PETA wants to show the ad in UK cinemas. Lets hope they get approval for that and start showing the ad in the United States.

The ad is a barbaric summation of PETA’s views. It shows a woman wearing a fur coat on a busy day who suddenly is attacked by a stranger with a baseball bat. The man beats the women until she falls to the ground at which point the stranger steals her coat and runs off. The viewer is left wondering whether or not the woman is still alive.

According to PETA’s Sean Gifford, this advertisement is supposed to highlight the pain inflicted on fur bearing animals who are raised and killed for their pelts,

When animals are killed on fur farms, they are gassed or beaten and many of them are alive when they are skinned. This advert is meant to convey the graphic nature of what happens. . . . It is meant to shake people up and we only hope the censors do the right thing and allow us to show it.

It is odd that PETA recently complained that a game of cow bingo reinforced cruelty to animals, but it has no such qualms showing an advertisement featuring the brutal beating of a human being.

Which is why this writer, for one, hopes the British advertising censors allow it to run, and moreover that PETA changes its mind and broadcasts this ad in the United States. That PETA thinks a mink killed for its fur and a woman assaulted with a baseball bat are essentially the same things speaks volumes about where the animal rights movement is coming from.

There can be few more visceral examples of the poverty of the animal rights position than to point out that the larges animal rights organization in the United States is unable to draw clear moral distinctions between the thousands of women murdered every year and the killing of mink and other fur bearing animals. This commercial should be considered required viewing for anyone who wants a peek at what is really behind PETA’s pro-animal facade.

Source:

Animal rights want to show violent advert. Graham Hiscott, The Irish Examiner, March 9, 2002.

What Is Behind Fiji’s High Female Suicide Rate?

Fiji has what is believed to be the highest rate of female suicide in the world. But a new State Department report suggests that many suicide victims are in fact victims of the despicable practice of “bride burning.”

The high suicide rate occurs among Fiji’s ethnic Indian population. Of 288 people who attempted suicide in Fiji, 88 percent were ethnic Indian. According to the U.S. State Department, however, many of the suicides are suspicious,

In addition to the rise in domestic violence, there have been approximately 30 ‘suicides’ by Indo-Fijian women that appeared to have been bride burning. Police investigations report that the women burned themselves so severely as to cause death, but the women’s rights community believes that the deaths are the result of bride burning.

Murdering brides by burning them is a practice that occasionally occurs in India when there is a dispute between the groom’s and bride’s families over payment of a dowry.

Not everyone is buying the claim that all 30 suicides are the result of bride burning, however. Angela Devi, an Australian social worker from Fiji, said, “I know there are some instances of violence against women in the Indo-Fijian community but… it would be wrong to assume that all the 30 suicide deaths were results of bride burning.”

On the other hand, a Fiji governmental committee recently documented high levels of domestic violence in Fiji’s Indian community.

Sources:

Indo-Fijian women targets of bride burning: US report. NewWindPress.Com, March 12, 2002.

U.S. highlights Fiji ‘bride-burning’. Phil Mercer, The BBC, March 11, 2002.