Ending wildlife cruelty is humanity’s biggest modern challenge – and it took a pandemic for us to realise

As the world reels from the coronavirus crisis and people in many cities and villages have been bound to their homes, I've been thinking endlessly about animal rights.

With the expansion of cities and the growth in population density, animal habitats are becoming increasingly smaller and less safe. Cities have continued to get closer to wildlife habitats, enabling the continuation of the profitable trade of animals. With some animals taking advantage of the lack of human activity around the world, I've thought a lot about animals' right to life, and what humanity has done to a number of species on earth.

Animals have gained little more from humans than the punishment of living in captivity. Zoos have become filled and many animals are often trained to be used for entertainment and leisure circuses.

You may have seen the horrific videos yourself. Monkeys chained and punished by their handlers in order to learn how to ride a bike; depressed bears, suffering from captivity-related conditions like Zoochosis, with their worried faces, restlessly climbing up and down a set of stairs. Or perhaps you've seen the hungry lions of the Khartoum Zoo in Sudan, whose bones stick out?

We recently published an article in Independent Persian, translated from English, which spoke of training elephants for tourist attractions in Thailand. The story of the experience of those baby elephants in captivity was so sad and painful that I couldn’t read it to the end. A colleague of mine told me of the pain she went through when editing and publishing the piece. For hours afterwards, her heart raced and a mind full of thoughts about the oppression that goes on against so many live beings.

The article spoke of the hunger that baby elephants experience in order to be tame enough to stay in their cages; of pulling their legs to break their will so that they can be amenable to coaches in the future.

We humans have wisdom, dignity and mercy. We have hearts and minds capable of love and kindness. Why are we so bad at exercising those things when it comes to animals? This dirty industry includes smugglers and dealers driven by profit. But it also includes participation by people who help the show go on. Those who line up to ride elephants or give carrots to monkeys.

Those who go to the circus to see lions, foxes and tigers jump through hoops of fire; or to see monkeys and other live beings walk on ropes. Do they know what violence goes into training these animals?

Circuses and zoos are one side of the wildlife abuse story. The other side of this despicable trade is consuming them. Wild animals are stolen from their habitats, sold in brutal markets thousands of kilometers away, as if mere commodities.

The violation of the rights of animals is now humanity’s biggest challenge since the Second World War. To trade and eat bats, poisonous snakes, pangolins, birds and wild reptiles is, at least in my view, not due to necessity. It's about adventurism and boasting about one’s financial prowess to those who don’t have the means to eat such delicacies.

I am not a philosopher but, to me, coming up with such despicable innovations in eating habits as a way of boasting about one’s status shows the emptiness of humanity and its moral decline. It shows separation from human values and a culture of seeking false superiority over others.

To steal animals, to destroy wildlife, to exploit live beings and, more despicably, to eat them has now engulfed humanity. Once the quarantine period is over and we all go back to our normal lives (a far away prospect for most countries right now) human life will see many changes. Our values, human meetings and the way we contact each other will change forever. Let’s hope that eradicating zoos and other forms of animal captivity becomes part of that new world view.

Let governments see this pandemic as a turning point, an end to the immoral oppression of live beings. The first stop should be the universal criminalisation of the wildlife trade and the massacre of animals. Next to hopefully curbing coronavirus, breaking this cycle could become humanity’s biggest achievement.

Camelia Entekhabifard is editor in chief of the Independent Persian