This is the kind of action that PETA and many other “mainstream” animal rights groups refuse to condemn. The vacation home of a drug company executive was torched and his mother’s ashes stolen. From the story:
British animal rights activists have been accused of burning down a holiday home of one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical bosses and stealing his mother’s ashes. Daniel Vasella, the CEO of Novartis, has been targeted by militants because of the Swiss company’s ties with the controversial British animal testing company, Huntington Life Sciences (HLS).
Police have launched an investigation after his Austrian holiday villa in the small Tyrolean village of Bach was set on fire on Monday...”It was a criminal act,” a Novartis spokesman said, adding there was “no doubt” that the notorious activist group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was behind the arson.
The alleged attack came a week after the grave of Dr Vasella’s parents was targeted. An urn containing the ashes of his mother, who died in 2001, was stolen in the eastern Swiss city of Chur. A message was spray-painted on the gravestone in red letters saying: “Drop HLS Now.”
This is an example of “tertiary targeting,” that is, attacking businesses that do business with HLS. Moreover, it isn’t the first time that animal rights activists have caused intense emotional distress to people they dislike by grave robbing. Readers of SHS and my other work on this issue will recall that the owner of a farm in the UK, targeted by terrorists for raising guinea pigs—faced the heartbreak of having a loved one’s body stolen out of her grave and buried in a forest.
Will animal rights activists generally, and the movement’s leaders specifically, condemn this action, both the arson and the stealing of loved one’s remains? Don’t hold your breath or you will turn very blue.
