Baraza

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jul 21 2008 | By: baraza

Many of you have probably seen the historic decision by Spain to give apes legal rights.

This is the first time that legal rights have been conferred to an animals by a state. The Spanish parliament’s environmental committee voted to approve resolutions committing the country to the Great Apes Project (GAP), designed by scientists and philosophers who say that humans’ closest biological relatives also deserve rights.

But, reactions to the vote have been mixed – many in Spain wonder if it’s a national priority, especially when Spain has no wild apes of its own. Others see a contradiction with the cruelty experienced by bulls in bullfights in the same country.

Personally I think it’s a step in the right direction but my views are not shared with these guys who seem to believe that humans are created more equal. I would love to poll your views on this development.

I know that some people will never comprehend nor want to comprehend just how similar we are to apes, afteral it’s uncomfortable, it forces us to rethink how special we are.

While at Princeton I read a lot about the Great Ape Project (GAP) and even discussed it with Peter Singer, a world famous bioethicist. I recall that he upheld his moral authority by being a vegetarian and by giving away all his extra money. His views are almost always considered, and almost always controversial. Here is a clip from his article “Of Great Apes and Men” published in The Guardian today

“Paola Cavalieri and I founded The Great Ape Project in 1993 to break down the barriers between human and nonhuman animals. Researchers such as Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey and Birute Galdikas have shown that great apes are thinking, self-aware beings with rich emotional lives, and thereby prepared the ground for extending rights to them.

If we regard human rights as something possessed by all human beings, no matter how limited their intellectual or emotional capacities may be, how can we deny similar rights to great apes? To do so would be to display a prejudice against other beings merely because they are not members of our species - a prejudice we call speciesism, to highlight its resemblance to racism.”

I might not agree with everything Singer says, but I do agree with this stand on Great Apes.

Today I visited their site here and signed their declaration which I should have done years ago. This is what it says in part

“We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans.

The community of equals is the moral community within which we accept certain basic moral principles or rights as governing our relations with each other and enforceable at law. Among these principles or rights are the following:

1. The Right to Life
2. The Protection of Individual Liberty
3. The Prohibition of Torture“

But I can’t help wondering how we got to giving apes rights before we actually made sure that all humans have rights, children, women, the physically and mentally challenged, and people of colour and certain races (to name just a few minorities) are still discriminated against in so many places,…and for those in some countries, apes are just food!

So my challenge to GAP is to focus on getting similar laws passed in Great ape range states.

What do you think … could it happen?

Tags: Apes, bonobos, chimpanzees, Gorillas, Great Ape Project, Legal rights for apes, Orangutans, Spain

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