NO To Animal Cruelty – YES To Animal Welfare Bill
By Vositha Wijenayake –May 21, 2015
Vositha Wijenayake
Recently a video which was shared by a Sri Lankan on his Facebook managed to grab a lot of attention. Why? Many reasons. One probably being that some people liked watching cruelty to animals, the other due toa petition which was launched against the video, requesting that the man be punished for cruelty he inflicted on the animal. More specifically a cat, which was been taunted for a human’s entertainment.
A few questions remained unanswered. One includes the identity of the individual on the video, who speaks in Tamil to the cat, throwing it around, in the air, flipping him from side to side, and also carrying the animal by his neck, with his mouth as a cat would carry his kittens. This obviously creates a question as to the mental stability of the human who seems to be behaving not humane. Despite the petition’s call for punishing of the individual who has shared the video given the dilemma mentioned one cannot be assured whether it is the sharer who is in the video or not.
In addition to the lack of clarity of the individual, the biggest hurdle to take action against this sort of individuals remains the law. The law that is archaic, outdated with fines which are too low and with implementation that is almost never. If one has not heard of filed a case against anyone being fined for hitting his cat, not feeding it, or injuring it by throwing fire crackers at it, this would be due to the non-implementation of the law on animal cruelty in Sri Lanka, as well as the short-comings pertaining to it.
Cruelty to Animals
Cruelty to animals is defined by Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance No. 13 of 1907 as amended by N0.19 of 1912, 43 of 1917, 9 of 1919, 23 of 1921, 16 of 1927, 17 of 1930, 12 of 1945 and Act no. 22 of 1955.
According to section 2 of the Ordinance, the offence of cruelty is defined as including cruelly beat, ill-treat, over-drive, or cause or procure to be cruelly beaten, ill-treated, over-driven, over-ridden, abused or torture any animal; cause unnecessary pain or suffering to any animal by an act or omission, as well as convey or carry or cause them in vehicles, basket, box, or cage or otherwise, any animal or position animals so as to subject them to unnecessary pain or suffering.The penalty for this offence is provided as a fine that may extend to hundred rupees, or imprisonment (maximum 3 months) or both.Read More
