Animal liberation

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Under animal liberation actions to liberate animals from are factory farming , battery hens , fur farms or experimental animal laboratories understood. The animals are either released into nature by the activists or housed with private individuals. Legally, animal liberation actions are generally treated as criminal offenses .

Animal liberation also denotes a political position that rejects any use of sentient living beings by humans. In contrast to the animal rights position, however, this is not required through the introduction of animal rights, but goes hand in hand with a skepticism about state-used instruments of power and relationships of rule. Furthermore, the problem of speciesism in animal liberation is not seen as a purely animal-ethical problem, but in particular as a social problem, in a manner comparable to sexism and racism.

Historically, the term goes back to the book Animal Liberation published by Peter Singer in 1975 , with which the modern animal rights movement began.

motivation

In the opinion of animal liberation activists, animals are exploited in such establishments or imputed basic rights ( animal rights ) are withheld or systematically violated. Helmut F. Kaplan, for example, justifies animal liberation as morally legitimate. "As soon as someone has any rights, he automatically has the right to be exempted if these rights are withheld from him."

While the activists generally try to remain undetected, so-called open animal liberations are carried out nakedly and documented with the help of cameras. The filmed or photographed material is intended to attract media attention. Often open animal exemptions are organized in intensive husbandry companies where there are violations of animal protection laws. From u. a. the Animal Liberation Front or PETA are animal liberation actions as a direct action called.

One of the first cases of animal liberation to have been publicized was the kidnapping of two dolphins from the University of Hawaii Marine Biology Institute by students Kenneth W. Le Vasseur and Stephen C. Sipman in 1977. After the perpetrators released the dolphins in the Pacific Ocean, called they held a press conference in Honolulu to brief the journalists on what they were doing. The act of Le Vasseur and Sipman set a precedent for the American judiciary . Both were convicted of theft. The first publicly discussed precedent for animal liberation from a public research institution was the controversy surrounding the monkeys of Silver Spring , which began in the USA in 1981 and then polarized politically and legally for decades and shaped the accompanying discourse. The animal liberation of the bear macaque Britches , which was removed from an experimental laboratory at the University of California at Riverside in 1985 by activists of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) , also became known to the general public .

Legal evaluation in Germany

Legally, animal liberations are generally a criminal offense . Since animals are legally treated as a thing according to Section 90a of the German Civil Code , animal exemptions can therefore be punished as theft within the meaning of Section 242 of the Criminal Code (StGB), unless the animals are immediately released into the wild (abandoned). The abandoning of animals is prohibited according to Section 3 (3) of the Animal Welfare Act (TierSchG) and is punished with a fine as an administrative offense in accordance with Section 18 (1) No. 4 of the Animal Protection Act .

Unauthorized entry into other people's stables, research facilities or breeding operations is generally considered trespassing ( Section 123 StGB). If, for example, doors are broken open, there is also material damage ( Section 303 of the Criminal Code). However, the case law is inconsistent.

Well-known activists

  • Richard O'Barry (USA; * 1939); freed 14 dolphins by their own account. He has received several awards, including the United Nations Conservation Prize, and has been arrested and convicted several times.
  • Barry Horne (Great Britain; 1952-2001) was sentenced to a prison term of 18 months for the first time for the liberation of laboratory animals. He died in prison after a hunger strike, serving an 18-year sentence for arson. The British court described him as an urban terrorist .
  • Achim Stößer (Germany; * 1963) was sentenced to a fine in 2005 for exempting animals.
  • Gary Yourofsky (USA; * 1970) was arrested 13 times between 1997 and 2001 . In 1999, he spent 77 days in a Canadian maximum security prison after causing $ 500,000 in damage to a mink farm. He had opened the stables there so that in 1542 mink escaped from a Canadian fur farm.

criticism

Direct actions are also controversial among animal rights activists. The animal welfare position they will generally be opposed altogether.

literature

  • Thomas Schwarz: Animal Liberation - Between Moral Trade and Law Enforcement. In: Wilfried Breyvogel (Ed.): An introduction to youth cultures . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-8100-3540-8 , p. 113 ff. (Textbook).
  • Klaus Petrus: Animal Rights Movement - History, Theory, Activism . Unrast, 2013, ISBN 978-3-89771-118-1 .
  • Matthias Rude: Antispeciesism. The liberation of humans and animals in the animal rights movement and the left . Butterfly Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-89657-670-5 .
  • Matthias Rude: Animal Liberation. In: Arianna Ferrari, Klaus Petrus (ed.): Lexicon of human-animal relationships . Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2015, ISBN 978-3-8376-2232-4 , pp. 337–339.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Maring, Matthias [ed.]: Area ethics in interdisciplinary dialogue . In: Series of publications by the Center for Technology and Business Ethics at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology . KIT Scientific Publishing, Karlsruhe 2014, ISBN 978-3-7315-0155-8 , doi : 10.5445 / ksp / 1000037755 ( uni-karlsruhe.de [accessed on September 1, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Bode, Philipp: Introduction to animal ethics . UTB, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-8252-4917-5 .
  3. ^ Lyle Munro: The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature . In: Sociology Compass . tape 6 , no. 2 . Wiley Online Library, 2012, pp. 166–181 , doi : 10.1111 / j.1751-9020.2011.00440.x ( wiley.com [accessed September 1, 2019]).
  4. ↑ Thomas Schwarz: Veganism and the right of animals. In: Wilfried Breyvogel (Ed.): An introduction to youth cultures. (Textbook), VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-8100-3540-8 , p. 93.
  5. ↑ a b Helmut F. Kaplan: Animal Liberation - Criminal Acts or Consistent Ethics? In: Interdisciplinary Working Group Animal Ethics Heidelberg (Hrsg.): Tierrechte . Harald Fischer Verlag, Erlangen 2007, p. 151.
  6. ↑ Kevin Kroemmer: Actions Speak Louder - Direct Actions for Animal Liberation. In: Liberation doesn't stop with humans! Perspectives from the animal liberation movement. Berlin 2005, pp. 77-91.
  7. ^ Gavan Daws: "Animal Liberation" as a Crime: The Hawaii Dolphin Case. In: Harlan B. Miller, William H. Williams (Eds.): Ethics and Animals . Clifton, New Jersey 1983, pp. 361-371.
  8. ↑ OLG Karlsruhe, decision of February 18, 2005, Az. 2 177/04 and OLG Karlsruhe, press release of March 4, 2005 .
  9. ↑ Militant Animal Liberators - Defense of the dwarf rabbits, attack on capitalism. In: Spiegel online. October 21, 2006.