The state’s clergy consider dogs to be dirty and recently cracked down on pet owners in Tehran, with police declaring that walking dogs in parks was a criminal offense.
The Islamic Republic of Iran brutally killed over 1,700 stray dogs in a shelter, according to video footage posted on Twitter by Iranian journalists and human rights experts.
“The [Ali] Khomeinist regime’s main reason for incessant killing and promoting the culture of cruelty to animals is another way of depriving the Iranian people of joy or comfort that animals bring to humans. It’s the old-fashioned irrational methods of control imposed by the authorities in the USSR or the Chinese Communist Party,” Iranian-American journalist and human rights expert Banafsheh Zand told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
“The [Ali] Khomeinist regime’s main reason for incessant killing and promoting the culture of cruelty to animals is another way of depriving the Iranian people of joy or comfort that animals bring to humans. It’s the old-fashioned irrational methods of control imposed by the authorities in the USSR or the Chinese Communist Party.”
Iranian-American journalist and human rights expert Banafsheh Zand
The London-based Iran International news outlet on Monday reported that it received video footage from animal rights activists in the Gandak area of the Tehran province about a “mass killing” of dogs.
The Iranian-American human rights activist Marjan Keypour tweeted that “When it comes to Iran, noting matters. Civil rights leaders don’t care about Iran’s minorities; western feminists don’t care abt [about] our women; environmental groups don’t care about our drying lakes & rivers, environment; animal rights activists don’t care abt [about] Iran’s massacred dogs.”
Shalin Gala, a vice president for the US-based NGO People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), tweeted: “Awful—1700 stray dogs apparently shot and killed by authorities in Iran. This woman’s cries are just heartbreaking.”
“They [Iran’s regime] have been doing this for decades, like in the case of the poor 60-year-old woman, Sholeh Raoufi, who back in 2015 was burned alive on her property where she lived and where she sheltered 200 cats which she paid for out of her own pocket,” Zand said.
“The regime’s enforcers set fire to her property in the middle of the night while she slept; they lied about it and claimed it was angry neighbors and then some electrical short that set the place ablaze, but it was clear to all that that was another warning to Iranians that being animal lovers is not tolerated. Fascism running a muck.”
What’s the history here?
The US government-funded news organization Radio Farda reported in 2019 that Iranian animal rights activists protested against the Tehran municipal authorities for their abuse and killing of stray dogs.
Radio Farda reported at the time that a video showed the “gruesome killings of stray dogs, including puppies, with injections that made them whine and cry in pain before dying. Activists said they believed the dogs had been put down with acid injections.”
Crackdown on dog ownership
The ultra-repressive theocratic state’s clergy consider dogs to be dirty and recently cracked down on pet owners in Tehran. Police declared that walking dogs in parks was a criminal offense and defended the ban to “protect the safety of the public.”
According to a BBC report last week, the Tehran-based veterinarian Dr. Ashkan Shemirani said: “There has not been a solid regulation around owning dogs.”
He noted that “Police forces arrest people for walking their dogs or even carrying them in their cars based on their interpretation of what could be seen as symbols of Westernisation.”
Dr. Shemirani told BBC that the authorities built a “prison” for the dogs, adding “We heard loads of horror stories from that place.”