Bear fighting

        Once the Pakistani authorities teach legal, moral and ethnic arguments on bear baiting and make it part of the school curriculum, WSPA will produce public awareness posters and other materials such as leaflets.  Many Pakistanis believe that educating children about bear baiting is unfair.  They argue children are to young to learn about bear baiting and their decisions will be made for them.   If children do not get taught both sides of bear baiting at a relatively young age, when are they going to learn?  The children are not going to have their decisions made for them, they are simply being informed on bear baiting.  It would not be necessary to teach at girl’s schools, only at boy’s schools as the audience of a bear baiting event is solely male.  

        If the Pakistani government set up a bear registration scheme to monitor and stop further depletion of wild bears, then WSPA will employ assistance to the Pakistani government.

        WSPA have already started to educate in the Pakistani low income kalander (gypsy) communities about the law of bear baiting.  They have begun to re-train many kalanders and find new jobs which are legal and outside the paths of bear baiting and dancing.  WSPA promise to continue their work if the Pakistani government help and fund WSPA.  WSPA would also like the Pakistani government to try and raise the living standards of gypsies and permanently rehome some.  It is argued my many that few rural gypsy communities will be targeted.  It will also cost the authorities over two million pounds to rehome and re-train some gypsies.  Many tax paying Pakistani citizens argue that this money could be spent elsewhere.  Some say that many gypsies choose to travel and live on the move and will not wish to be rehomed to a stable environment.  Vast amounts of people say that the adult gypsies should not be taught or educated because they say that they will never change their ways.  Many Pakistani citizens who pay taxes are unemployed.  The unemployed of Pakistan are furious that gypsies are being considered for jobs, whilst they are not.  

        There are many people involved in bear baiting.  Some have jobs, which would disappear if the government decided to pay more attention to the illegal goings on of bear baiting. These are the people in bear baiting.  The graziers who capture the bears from the wild, the traders who purchase the bear from the grazier and sells the bear onto the kalander, the kalander buys the bear, extracts the cub’s incisors and canine teeth and pierces the cubs muzzle with a large ring.  The kalander then teaches the cub to dance by being beaten and manipulated by a tug of the nose ring.  Once the cub has been trained to dance, some kalanders are encouraged to use their bear in bear baiting.  The landowners provide the site for the bear baiting event and some fund kalanders, the helpers are usually tenants, servants or landless labourers who are all under the control of the landlord.  The audience watch the fights, they are mainly made up of male youngsters and old men.  There are always many landlords attending the event.

        If bear baiting is successfully stopped, the graziers, traders and the kalanders would all be jobless.  The Pakistani government are going to have to do better than just re-train the kalanders.  

        The Pakistani governments issued a statement saying that the population of the Asiatic Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus) has dropped to less than a thousand bears.  The population of the once common Brown Bear (ursus arctos) has dramatically dropped to less than fifty bears.  If the population of bears continue drop at this rate all bears could soon be extinct.  Farmers argue that with the population of bears before were causing crop damage.  Many Pakistanis say that wild bears were a general nuisance and were a terror.  They say that if the general capture of bears is banned the bears will be cause trouble, become pests and even cause economical damage.

        Most Pakistanis are devout Muslims.  They believe whatever Allah tells them.  The only problem is that Allah’s script is in Arabic and many Pakistanis do not know a large amount of what Allah says.  In the scripts of Allah, it says that, ‘may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade inciting animals to fight one another.’  This is what many societies who are trying to stop bear baiting believe will be their strongest point in making the audience and the people who organise such events as bear baiting, stop.  WSPA are trying to make the general public aware of this by putting up posters informing people of what Allah said about not encouraging animals to fight each other.

        In conclusion I am against bear baiting.  I think bear baiting demonstrates poor and very unequal animal rights.  It is animal cruelty.  However I do give sympathy for many kalanders as they are born into the whole culture of bear baiting and dancing.  Many have no other careers option, but if the Pakistani government helps re-train them then they might have a brighter future.  I think that the Pakistani government should pay a lot closer attention to bear baiting.  A survey shows that 85% of people taking this survey think that governments in Europe should pay more attention to bear baiting.  It showed that 81% think that governments in Europe should pay more attention to bear dancing.  It also showed that 85% of people thought that all events involving bears should be completely banned worldwide.  Many people think that bear baiting should be allowed to go on only if an event is registered.  I on the other hand do not think that bear baiting should be allowed to continue at all.  I think it should be completely abolished.  There should be long jail sentences for anyone involved in bear baiting.  Quite often bears that are badly injured die, in this case I think anyone involved in the act of killing a bear should face death penalty.  There are death penalties for crimes in Pakistan such as adultery.  Afterall a life for a life.

By Annabel McInroy