The Sunday Times magazine has featured an article examining the cruelty of horse fighting in the Philippines, and the difficulty of trying to end this brutal industry.
Earlier this year, journalist, Stanley Johnson, travelled to Mindanao in the Philippines to experience the horror of horse fighting first hand. The bloodshed, corruption and brazen disregard for animal welfare he witnessed there formed the backbone of an outstanding article on this issue.
Horse fights entail two stallions incited to fight each other over a mare in season. They bite, kick and strike each other with their hooves, inflicting serious injuries until one of them submits, flees or is killed. Despite being illegal, this blood sport takes place publicly and draws a large crowd.
Travelling in the region is fraught with danger and Network for Animals veterinarian, Dino Yebron, works tirelessly against this cruel practice despite the dangers. Johnson writes in the article, “Dino, with his long veterinary experience, is as much concerned for the welfare of the mare as for the stallions. “That mare,” he says, pointing to a quivering animal roped in the middle of the arena, “has been out there in the sun all day. There may have been 10 or 12 fights. She’ll have been mounted as many times. That’s the winner’s perk. You might say she’s gang-raped…There’s nothing noble or natural about the horse fight. This is a purely induced anger.”
Network for Animals works on the ground in the Philippines and via political channels in the UK to try and bring an end to this barbaric practice. If you caught the Sunday Times article and want to take action on horse fighting. Please use this link to write the Philippines ambassador in London on this issue.
Click here to download the article in full.
English
Afrikaans
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Basque
Belarusian
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Catalan
Cebuano
Chichewa
Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional)
Corsican
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
Esperanto
Estonian
Filipino
Finnish
French
Frisian
Galician
Georgian
German
Greek
Gujarati
Haitian Creole
Hausa
Hawaiian
Hebrew
Hindi
Hmong
Hungarian
Icelandic
Igbo
Indonesian
Irish
Italian
Japanese
Javanese
Kannada
Kazakh
Khmer
Korean
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Kyrgyz
Lao
Latin
Latvian
Lithuanian
Luxembourgish
Macedonian
Malagasy
Malay
Malayalam
Maltese
Maori
Marathi
Mongolian
Myanmar (Burmese)
Nepali
Norwegian
Pashto
Persian
Polish
Portuguese
Punjabi
Romanian
Russian
Samoan
Scottish Gaelic
Serbian
Sesotho
Shona
Sindhi
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian
Somali
Spanish
Sudanese
Swahili
Swedish
Tajik
Tamil
Telugu
Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
Vietnamese
Welsh
Xhosa
Yiddish
Yoruba
Zulu