#stopanimalabuse in #Bosnia #Herzegovina , country's of barbarians like Ibrahim Hadžibajrić Bosnia's straydogs are in DANGER!! If the Bosnian law from 2009 protecting stray animals gets suspended, the killing of stray dogs would resume! January 26, 2013 - During the Bosnian War, Sarajevo was under siege from 1992 to 1995. There was exposed artillery, snipers, cold and hunger clinging on the international humanitarian aid. Having not enough food for themselves, many people abandoned their dogs and cats, while others put their companion animals before themselves - giving them the little food they got from humanitarian aid - and a lot of animals also found themselves all alone because their owners had been killed. Today, an estimated 12,000 abandoned dogs live on the streets of Sarajevo; nobody knows the number of abandoned dogs in the entire country given that there are no records. In 2009, the Bosnian government passed a law - which is a prerequisite for Bosnia & Herzegovina's EU membership - that protects straying animals by prohibiting the catching (collecting) and brutal killing of the dogs by municipal workers. Since then, it is prohibited to kill stray animals, except in cases determined by a veterinarian as the only possible measure. The law furthermore says that owners are required to sterilize and register their pet animals. They must register them at a competent veterinarian, which will have a record of all ownership of dogs and cats - the deadline for registration being seven days after acquiring a dog or cat. For those who already had pet animals, the deadline was 6 months from the entry into force of the law. Thus October 8, 2009 was the deadline by which all owned dogs and cats had to be registered. One year after the entry into force of the law, that was the deadline for the municipalities, cities, cantons or entities to build shelters for animals. But this part of the law was not applied in practice at all. Before aggression, Bosnia and Herzegovina was among the middle economically developed countries but today is the poorest country in Europe because of careless corrupted local, regional and central governments that only care about their own pockets and it should be no surprise that some of the few government or municipal shelters are set up mostly as money laundering machines for the government and some private individuals in order to enable them to steel money. The mentioned law, passed nearly four years ago banning the killing of strays, had actually been passed because the government was alarmed at a sharp rise in canine slaughter as straying dogs proliferated on Bosnian streets. But people ignored the law, largely because authorities failed to provide alternatives such as sterilization and the needed shelters to house the animals and to keep them off the streets... and so the killings continued. The law from 2009 is actually a very good law, but it was adopted "over night" without anybody providing the conditions for its implementation. And without proper implementation the best laws are useless and not even worth the paper on which they are written! The Republika Srpska does not even accept the law from 2009 - even though they were obliged to - and they work according to the old law from 2008, which gives them the right to kill dogs after a period of 30 days. They even don’t fully comply to this old regulation and most often kill dogs as soon as possible. This happened at the Hresa-shelter three months ago when they killed 52 dogs in one night. Since the country remains deeply divided along ethnic lines, different parts of Bosnia deal with the problem of strays in different ways. That's because the 1992-95 war between Bosnia's three groups, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats, ended with a peace agreement that divided Bosnia into two semi-autonomous regions, linked by a weak central government. It's an arrangement that allows some local governments to pass their own dog-killing laws that contradict the nationwide ban. About Horror Shelter in Hreša by Jelena Paunović on Saturday, 26 January 2013 As you all already saw, Hreša shelter is open again. Three months ago we did everything to close that „shelter“ and we did it. Few days ago, some people contacted me and said that Hreša works again. With other activists I went there to check that information. Unfortunately, they were right! After we closed Hresa three months ago, their director Slavko Jovicic was obviously very disappointed because, without incomes from municipalities who financed Hresa, he was in desperate situation. According to, yet to be confirmed information, major of one of Sarajevo municipalities made a contract with Hresa. Same source informed me that contract included request to pick up 50 dogs a day of the streets of given municipality. Bosnia and Hercegovina has no kill animal protection and rights law which bans euthanasia. In Republika Srpska things are different as they don’t accept law of the BiH (even though they were obliged to) and they work according to old law from 2008. which gives them right to kill dog after 30 days period. They even don’t fully comply to this old regulation and most often kill dogs as soon as possible. This happened at Hresa three months ago when they killed 52 dogs in one night. This “shelters” are set up mostly as money laundering machines for government and some private individuals in order to enable them to steel money. One of the big problems is employees who should be called butchers more then regular people. They treat dogs in horrific manner and they have silent approval from Republika Srpska authorities. Few of us, including myself, were there today and found 20 dogs lying around in cages at bare concrete at -6 degrees temperature. Only food we found was some pieces of old frozen bread and water was frozen too. Even though we brought some dry food employees didn’t allow us to feed them and they left empty bellies. In all this story biggest concern of us is that if this contract proves to be true this would mean that all of dogs from given municipality will be caught and killed in terrible way. Even if we let them do this for one municipality there is always chance that they will move one on the next one and kill most of the dogs in city. I personally believe this to be true as everyone is trying to fish for a few cheep political points one expense of poor street dogs. O n the other side what to do if we end up with 50 killed innocent dogs every day? In a two days we are going to have meeting with municipality major and see if this is true and to what degree. Information on this shelter is compiled in the following links: http://inmemoryofvucko.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/horror-shelter-in-hresa-bosnia/ http://inmemoryofvucko.wordpress.com/2012/11/03/horror-shelter-in-hresa-part-two/ http://inmemoryofvucko.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/horror-shelter-in-hresa-part-three/ http://inmemoryofvucko.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/horror-shelter-in-hresa-part-four/ http://www.occupyforanimals.org/bosnia--herzegovina-if-the-law-from-2009-gets-suspended-the-killing-of-stray-animals-would-resume.html