From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2000--

Animal advocates in Pakistan

MULTAN, Pakistan-- International human rights monitors consider
Pakistan one of the hardest of all places to advocate for women and
minorities. Animals scarcely rate public notice.
Among the major international animal protection organizations,
only the British-based Brooke Hospital for Animals and World Wildlife Fund
maintain a presence in Pakistan--and the four Brooke clinics deal almost
exclusively with equines, while the pro-hunting WWF confines its concerns
to wildlife.

The World Society for Animal Protection campaigns on behalf of
dancing bears in Pakistan, but faxes press releases to Islam-abad media
from London.

Pakistan enjoys a relatively strong tradition of press freedom, by
the standards of underdeveloped nations and the Islamic world. According
to the Dorling Kinders-ley World Reference Atlas, however, the illiteracy
rate runs as high as 60%, the poverty rate is comparable, corruption
inhibits the pursuit of justice, and the rates of commission of violent
crime--especially against dissidents--are among the highest in any Islamic
nation.

Public life in Pakistan is dominated by Islamic fundamentalists,
who tend to ignore teachings of Mohammed which were meant to protect women
and animals.

Afghanistan, to the north, has for more than 20 years been
embroiled in almost perpetual civil war. The Afghani strife sends Pakistan
a surfeit of cheap weapons, opium, and desperate men who will poach
wildlife--or kill a person-- for almost any price.

A cold war with India, the regional superpower, has continued
since the nations separated in 1948, flaring sometimes into gunfire--and
in 1998, tests of nuclear weapons. That makes ideas from India,
including about the humane treatment of animals, almost inherently suspect
to many Pakistanis.

None of that seems to inhibit the four young attorneys and a few
dozen others who have formed a Pakistani chapter of Animal Rights
International, "for preserving the life cycle of animals and compassionate
treatment," under the motto "Live and let live."

One recent ARI-Pakistan position paper reminds readers that the
name of Multan, the organization's home city, means "Land of Birds."
Lamenting losses of bird life to hunting and habitat destruction through
the use of land to raise animals for meat, the paper concludes by noting
the irony that most of the birds in Multan today are factory-farmed
poultry.

Another ARI-Pakistan position paper notes the recent decline of
rare Indus river dolphins, due to irrigation and pollution which have made
much of the Indus basin inhospitable both to the dolphins and to the fish
they eat.

ARI-Pakistan argues that the Indus basin should be protected
against both overfishing and dams which divert water away from critical
habitat for key species.

Thirty-two delegates attended a September 9 ARI-Pakistan
conference. According to minutes sent by trustee Faheem Aurangzeeb, the
discussion was prefaced by readings from ANIMAL PEOPLE and the ARI-Pakistan
newspaper Lord. Copies of each were posted on the wall.

Lord, edited by attorney Muhammed Arif Mehmood Qureshi, is so
titled as a reminder that Mohammed himself was an animal advocate, who
forbade hunting and once cut the sleeve off a favorite jacket rather than
pick it up and disturb an aged sleeping cat.

Lord emphasizes, in patriotic and reverent language, that
Pakistan must grow in moral stature by accepting an ethic of kindness, in
order to grow further in political and economic stature.

Advocating for both animals and human minorities, Lord resembles
the broadsheets of early British and U.S. humane societies, which opposed
slavery, child labor, dogfighting, and horse-flogging all at once, as
symptoms of the same corrosive human disrespect for other living creatures
of God.

[ARI-Pakistan may be contacted c/o 133 Pakiza Lodge, Lodhi Colony,
Multan, Pakistan; telephone 061-221659-549623;
<jbasheer@mul.paknet.com.pk>.]