We are grateful to the media Insajderi and Koha.net, who have published the killings and dog fights last week, that happened specifically in Rahovec/Orahovac. (links below)
We think that thanks to the public pressure (and the online petition organized by some activists) and the risk of a negative reputation of the municipality of Rahovec, Mr. Smajl Latifi, the mayor of the Municipality of Rahovec, has announced and published the ordinance below shared.
We do not deny that this action is appropriate. We are delighted that a mayor has highlighted this problem and asks and warns abusers and other institutions in a formal and serious way that these barbaric acts and crimes ought to be prohibited immediately.
However, all the points of the ordinance are outlined in the Law no. 02 / L-10 – “on animal welfare”. This means, the institutions have been informed since this law was created, that dog fights are serious legal violations. What has been missing so far is the institutional and political will to deal with these abuses and crimes against animals.
Whenever we have informed the police about animal abuse, we’ve had to beg them to come and deal with the cases we reported on. Sometimes, they even left us waiting for hours at the police stations without any concrete measures and results.
When we asked veterinarian inspectors within the Food and Veterinary Agency, to come to the animal market to identify illegal animal traders and slaughterers (who slaughtered animals in non-hygienic conditions and without previous stunning of animals), they withdrew by putting the responsibility and guilt for these problems, to other institutions; and even worse, they sometimes did not take these problems seriously.
As a conclusion, it is very good that this initiative has taken place by the mayor of Rahovec, now it is to us, as non-governmental organizations for the protection of animal rights, to abide by this directive and to ensure proper implementation of it to save the dogs from their abusers.
As you can see, punishments are just fines (which normally have their punitive effect) because the law 02 / L-10, foresees so. But, the most effective punishments would be the imprisonment of abusers and the confiscation of the animal as a victim. By March 2019, the newly revised Criminal Code of the Republic of Kosovo (approved to enter into force in March 2019) will foresee animal abuse as a criminal offense. We are looking so forward to this!
