Animal advocates across Australia are still being targeted with death threats following the enormously successful rallies against live exports across the country last Saturday.
Numerous threats were directed towards advocates prior to the National Day of Action to End Live Export. The death threats have continued.
National organiser, Dr Patricia Petersen, has received death threats and other threats of violence by phone, email and text message, and advocates in other states and territories who are afraid to reveal their identities have confirmed the threats. Tasmanian organiser Suzanne Cass has confirmed that she has received a number of threatening, abusive and obscene text messages following the successful rally in Hobart.
Dr Petersen and other supporters in favour of banning live exports, have reported the threats to the police. Ms Cass filed a report with Tasmania Police today.
‘This is a seriously alarming turn of events’, said Ms Cass. ‘Because we have exposed the horrors of the Indonesian cattle trade, people who would do anything to continue subjecting their animals to this obscene torture are targeting us and threatening us with violence, or even death. Because we don’t know who or where they are, our families and our animals are potentially in danger. And these people have firearms. In one of the messages I received, the sender claimed he (or she) was being paid over $35.00 per hour to send these messages, so who knows what else he might be paid for?
‘Dr Petersen has been told that she will be murdered and my mobile phone is still receiving disgusting messages containing threats of violence.’
Ms Cass says that industry claims of mass job losses as a result of the suspension of the Indonesian cattle trade are grossly exaggerated, with most of the jobs continuing to exist without the live shipping, and points to the 40,000 meat workers who lost their jobs as a direct consequence of the live export trade.
‘This industry wants its trade resumed in the full knowledge that their cattle will be subjected to the same torture we saw on ‘Four Corners’ three weeks ago’, Ms Cass continued. And not only do they want that, they want compensation for not being able to abuse any more animals.
‘Meat and Livestock Australia, the Cattlemens’ Association and the government cannot be trusted to safeguard the welfare of the animals shipped to torture in all importing countries’, Ms Cass concluded.
Earlier on Tasmanian times:
Shut down this fundamentally broken, systemically cruel trade
100,000 rally to stop live exports
