What you should know before visiting the land of Count Vlad Dracula - the Land of Death
Romania Tourism
The Slaughter Law
On 10th September the Lower House of the Romanian Parliament voted GEO 155/2001 to legitimise a 'catch and kill' policy for all homeless animals. The terminology used during the debate at the parliament was 'eradication'. Since this date media frenzy has been created because of the death of a young boy under what remains dubious circumstances. However the stray animals were blamed and as a result of the media frenzy and the vote, a state of abuse of animals exists now in Romania. Animals and their owners and protectors were immediately, and still are, at serious risk. It must be remembered that many millions of Romanians are animal owners or protectors of the animals. This law has polarized Romania's society and made it dangerously divisive.
There was already danger to people and property in addition to the threat to the animals... It had to be expected that millions of animal lovers would seek to protect their own animals or the animals they 'protect' on the streets. Millions! It had be be expected that half a country would seek to defend and protect and the other half would seek to aggress.
How strongly this will be enacted, will determine Romania's future. Violence against persons is already prevalent and now that licence is given by the Constitutional Court there will be neighbor against neighbor... and history has taught the lesson of violence and destruction in a country divided!
On 25th September, 2013 Constitutional Court judge Petre Lăzăroiu, suggested that "the mass killing of stray dogs in Romania could traumatize the population"... then the entire place ruled to cull all dogs... and that the eradication of Romania's homeless animals - although it had been ruled unconstitutional in January 2012 - was now "constitutional"!
On 25th of September, the Romanian Constitutional Court had an opportunity to define whether Romania is a country worthy of being called civilized or whether it should be consigned to popular perception of a country unworthy of being considered anything other than barbaric, mismanaged, corrupt and dangerous. They chose the latter.
Their approval of, and the implementation of GEO 155/2001 - which became Law 258/2013 - has produced worldwide condemnation and a perception that Romania is a country which introduces medieval practices and governs in a draconian mode. Most of the 'civilized' countries have introduced a 'Catch, Neuter, Vaccinate and Return' policy and now have very few homeless animals on the streets. This is a 21st century methodology.
Not only have the Romanian Government dismissed the warnings expressed by the experts, and failed to acknowledge this as a strategy but are assuredly aware of the costs and profits to be made from implementing the proposed 'eradication' strategy knowing that although there will be significant profits to be made, the net result will be abject failure and the number of animals will not decrease, all the while the to be expected exposure to endemic animal abuse on Romania's streets will have serious ramifications for the health of Romania's children.
In an explosive turn of events, an official document of The Public Prosecutor's Office has emerged and shows that Ionut Anghel - known as the 'child killed by stray dogs' - was NOT killed by stray dogs, but by 7 guard dogs owned by the company S.C. TEI REZIDENÅ¢IAL S.R.L. BUCUREÅžTI, throwing doubt over the whole basis of the brutal legislation.
Tens of thousands of innocent dogs have already lost their lifes, and the slaughter still continues....
The Stray Dog in Romania
by Michael Bird
For the past two years I have been working as a journalist making a film about Romania’s problem with stray dogs. The east European nation has millions of the animals prowling the streets, hotels, car parks, blocks of flats and even the backyard of Parliament and along the corridors of a children’s hospital.
A UK national, for nearly a decade I have been a resident of the capital Bucharest, where the dogs are part of the fabric of the city. So together with a local production team, we felt it was necessary to record on film the phenomenon of a capital in the European Union still plagued by wild animals.
We talked to animal and social experts about this environmental disaster, chased dogs through the streets, talked to victims and were attacked by a pack of strays in an abandoned playground. Often I would hear extraordinary stories about animals and their relationship with Romanians, but few of these could be demonstrated for the camera. Some included the low-cost methods county councils used to kill them, such as injecting the dogs with vinegar or burying them alive in limestone. But there were incredible stories about the dogs, including how they could use the buses, trams and underground trains – one dog (now deceased) could slip under the barriers at the Metro station, negotiate the stairs and enter the train, moving between two different stations every day to a place where she could find food.
However these dogs were close to extinction at the beginning of the last decade. In Bucharest, the mayor decided to organize a mass-slaughter of the dogs. This move would have been simple in a time of Totalitarianism, where the people rarely took a public stance against the police. But in a time of a fresh democracy, where the public were exercised at attacking the forces of order, this would prove difficult to manage. Added to this was a huge problem that continues to undermine Romania’s development—the fact that a scary number of people in public service and business are on the take.
There was this one block in Bucharest where a dog lived. He was a fat and shabby mongrel who sat at the front entrance, eating leftovers thrown out of the windows by the residents. Fed many times a day by different families, he lived a content life, sunning himself outside in the summer and finding a home in the basement of the block during the freezing winter.
But, with the mayor’s decision, a city dog catcher visited the block with a mandate to catch and kill the animal. The fat creature put up little resistance as he was trapped inside a metal loop and taken to the city pound to receive a lethal injection. When one of the residents of the block—an elderly woman—realized he was gone, she visited the pound to plead with the dog catchers to let him go. They were intransigent until she reached in her pocket, pulled out her purse and produced a few notes—worth about ten dollars—to take him home. Within half an hour the dog was back in his usual position, waiting for his next meal.
Now the dog catcher figured he was on to a good deal. Once a month he would visit the block, threaten to take the animal away and the pensioner would have to muster a ten dollar bribe to keep the dog alive.
But one afternoon, the dog catcher found the woman was not at home. Instead another elderly pensioner who fed the dogs was sitting outside in her dressing gown, cuddling the filthy animal. He asked her for money and there was an argument, but soon she agreed to provide him ten bucks to leave empty-handed.
The dog catcher began to increase the regularity of his visits. He would come back every week at a different time and encounter a different person caring for the dog and solicit a payment. If they refused he would seize the animal, chuck him in the back of his van and lock him up in the pound. Someone from the block would have to come up with the cash to save the creature from the needle. The dog catcher ended up pocketing around 100 dollars per month—close to the then average salary in Romania—for the job of threatening to kill one animal. If dog catchers were replicating this pattern across a city of two million people, with around a thousand blocks, each with their own resident dogs, there was scope for a 1.2 million-dollar-a-year black market. It’s possible that corruption saved thousands of vagabond canines.
This is a story I heard in many places across many cities in the country. Unfortunately on camera I could never catch someone taking or giving a bribe, but I thought this was a great example of how a society was failing in a surreal fashion—by doing nothing but sitting outside a block of flats, getting fat, wagging his tail and being friendly to anyone with a bag of bones, the stray dog in Romania had become a currency.
The following text is copied from an article written by Michael Bird, the journalist who has written the previous article and produced the above documentary "Man's Best Friend":
Ten reasons why Romania’s proposed mass-kill of millions of stray dogs won’t work and two reasons why it might
1. In a massive city, with a mass of dogs, mass-killing is rarely effective. The more dogs you kill, the more space and food there is for new dogs. The World Health Organisation backs this up. As long as people dump dogs on the street and let dogs loose on the street to breed, there will be more dogs. When dogs disappear, other dogs appear.
2. To kill the animals, cities need vets. Vets must want to kill the animals. But many vets don’t want to murder. People did not study for six years to swap the surgery for the slaughterhouse. Last month in southwest city of Timisoara the vets voted not to collaborate with City Hall to kill the dogs. More could follow.
3. All dogs must die – except mine. When Romanians are surveyed, they say they want to kill strays. But if you ask the same Romanians, if they want to see the charming, big brown-eyed mutt which greets them every day with a cocked head and a wagging tail, killed by lethal injection, they will refuse. Because this dog is kind to children, friendly to strangers and he never bites – and, when he does bite, it’s because he’s scared. It is always other people’s dogs who are dangerous. The dogs in the other block. In the other yard. In the other city.
4. Bucharest tried mass-murder. As Mayor of Bucharest, Traian Basescu ordered the killing of around 100,000 dogs between 2001 and 2003. It failed.
5. The wrong dogs will die. The dog catchers will pick up the quiet, old, sad and castrated dogs – the ones that can’t breed. The problem is not just stray dogs. The problem is loose dogs. I’ve followed dog catching around the housing areas of the Bucharest suburbs. When the residents leave for work in the morning, they let their dogs out on the street. If they are caught by dog catchers, the owners pick them up from the shelter and pay a fine. These are virile dogs. They breed with strays. They create new puppies. The problem persists.
6. People will hide the dogs. There are a lot of old, single and idle people in Bucharest. Often they love dogs. They will be watching for the dog catchers and, if they come for their strays, they will conceal them in their flat, basement, garage or yard.
7. No-kill could become a black market. In the past, dog catchers in Bucharest took money from residents in blocks to leave their stray dogs alone. This could happen again.
8. It is hard to catch a dog. There are around 15 trained dog catchers for three million people of Bucharest and its suburbs. They catch dogs by shooting them with a tranquilizer gun loaded with sedatives such as ketamine. The city will need a batallion of trained marskmen who can be trusted with a gun and a litre of a party drug with a high street value.
9. Bucharest is a metropolis run by a village council. It can’t cope with grand projects and grand challenges. Or even small ones. I live on Piata Unirii – a square at the centre of the city. An international showpiece. In one year, they have not finished re-surfacing the pavement. It is a building site of dust, mud, rocks and holes. If Bucharest cannot lay a few paving stones in its city centre, it cannot manage the mass-murder of over 50,000 lives.
10. The capital never gave other solutions a chance. Councillors will argue back that the NGOs’ favoured idea of the sterilisation and the return of dogs to the streets does not work, because stray dog attacks on people keep rising. But the City never tried a mass-scale programme to see whether the dog numbers would fall. If, over a five year period, many NGOs could co-ordinate professional sterilisation in conjunction with all seven City Halls of Bucharest and the surrounding county of Ilfov, alongside comprehensive adoption and education about responsible ownership, while giving the authorities the right to euthanize sick, old and aggressive dogs, the problem could stop.
And two reasons why it might work…
1. Under the new law, in a small city in Romania, it will probably be possible to round and kill up to 1,000 stray dogs. But in Bucharest, this needs an unprecedented effort. The city needs to declare war on dogs. It needs a militia to go block by block, possibly forcing residents to leave their homes, while police carry out searches, removing every dog they suspect of being a stray. There must be no exceptions. They must enforce the 14-day rule before murdering the dogs. Killing 60,000 dogs means a massacre – and a massacre can only be effective if is ruthless and mechanical.
2. Politicians enlist citizens to be vigilantes. Using the media, politicians demonize all dogs as violent. The Government passes a new law allowing dogs to be killed. This sends a signal to citizens that they have the liberty to beat, poison, run over or lynch any loose dog. Anecdotally, friends are telling me of how bodies of dogs are appearing more often on the outskirts of Bucharest. If the nation’s leaders keep up the rhetoric, this may continue. The streets will be running with blood and poison and the blocks will be echoing with the sound of bats against brains until the last stray in Bucharest is dead – while the authorities bear no responsibility.
The Eleventh Commandment of Romania
"Thou Shalt Not Love!"
In a polarized land where compassion is dying and the introduction of a 'Slaughter Law' provides for every animal on the street to be dragged away and killed, one women exemplifies natural protective compassion and love.
Here stands the line between humanity and inhumanity. Starkly represented!
On one side are the puppet-representatives of a government who seeks to extract maximum profitability from the ongoing slaughter of hundreds of thousands of dogs... and here is one woman to whom this dog is her friend... her companion... emotionally attached.
Harsh legislation in Romania discourages ownership... in many apartment blocks, the closest someone can come to ownership is to care for one of the 'community dogs' who live and depend on local people. This satisfies both the community, that they can care for the dogs and of course the dogs regard this as their 'home'.
But then comes the 'Slaughter Law'. A cold wind of terror insisting that ANY animal on the street be removed and after 14 days they are 'slaughtered'.
A Law of Terror. A Law of Division! A Law of Humanity Diminishment! A Law which creates a grotesque profitability based on death.
How low can a country fall? How long can a government flounder in the sewers of inhumanity? How long?
To Monica Muntean, the brave woman in this picture, WE say this:
"There is a world outside Romania where compassion and regard are manifest, towards both people and animals... They respect your strength... your integrity and your quest to defend the weak and feeble.
You may sometimes feel alone, but be assured that an ever increasing body of support is coming from every Western European and North American country. In a world where inhumanity is anathema, a mighty crowd stands beside you and is gathering to challenge a country whose governmental philosophy is increasing being defined as 'Thou Shalt Not Love!‘".
About the pictures:
A woman (Monica Muntean) embraces her dog that was taken from the streets by dog catchers who she tries to convince to release in Bucharest April 3, 2014. Her dog was later released by the dog catchers back to her. (REUTERS/Bogdan Cristel)
Happy Ending
Patratel, Monica's four-legged friend, was finally released back to her by the dog catchers... because she did
NOT let loose... because she did NOT give up!
The human cost
"One cannot conceive of a more counter productive, societally destructive direction taken by any
European Union Member Government in recent times."
- Malcolm Plant -
On September 25th, 2013 the Romanian Government modified their laws to permit the 'eradication' of all homeless animals after a 14 day 'pre-slaughter' period after capture.
Not only have the Romanian Government dismissed the warnings expressed by the experts, and failed to acknowledge T-N-R as a strategy (ALL 'catch & kill' policies have historically proven unsuccessful) but being aware of the costs and profits to be made from implementing the proposed 'eradication' strategy, are aware that significant personal profits can be made through corrupt alliances.
The net result will be abject strategic failure and the number of animals will not decrease. Through corrupt alliances, personal profits from the animal corpse disposal will have been secured.
But the biggest cost is in the human domain. Children exposed to the capture and often immediate slaughter of the animals will seek to psychologically protect themselves from such trauma. They will desensitize. Reduce their sensitivity towards living creatures including fellow humans. Some will embrace the attributes of their violent society and finding legitimized sanction for the destruction of the animal sub-group, will also aggress against the animals.
There is then some inevitability that once such aggression is socially sanctioned, their journey will continue by aggressing against person, against property. They will see no distinction. Their journey can easily lead to the killing of another person. Significant research has identified this development and ending. This is the slow diminishment of a society's moral substance and gradual increase into a prevalence of violence but a more immediate but equally destructive effect can be seen.
In any society, irrespective of political dictats, there is no homogeneity of support. Emotive issues exacerbate differences. Any society will contain those who passionately support the rights of companion animals and also those who have no regard or who are motivated by political hysteria. At such levels of passion. in counterpoint to each other, this polarization can produce levels of acute violence. Neighbor against neighbor! Even before official recognition of the law in Romania, two neighbors have fought over this issue and one was killed. Even before! One can only stand and watch now and wait while the death count gets higher!
NOTE: the next video is NOT from Romania, but from Bulgaria. We have added it because it shows what happens to children who are forced to witness animal cruelty since a very young age. It shows how desinsitized they become showing no emotion, no reaction at all when passing by a dog dying on the streets...
The 'slaughter law' has unleashed an unprecedented license to kill animals on the streets and significant inter-human violence in a now polarized society of aggressors and protectors of the helpless animals. It follows that with such a sanctioned increase in violence, effects will be exacerbated, affecting not only the animal populations and the human adult population but with impact mainly on the children and their psychological health. Such environments have never previously been created of this magnitude with most governments considering firstly that 'eradicating' the street animal population is proven to be an unsuccessful strategy.
Also the effects of polarizing a society about such an intensely emotive issue would be considered by any responsible government to be resisted because of its potential to produce civil unrest and violence. Six people have died already... after one week.
And finally, no responsible government would introduce a holocaust on the streets in form of young innocent minds which, to protect themselves, withdraw from the emotional world and lose compassion and lose empathy. The subtle destruction of all the fundamental elements upon which a society is founded!
