CIVIL RIGHTS FOR DOLPHINS !

Dolphins as objects Whether they are free or captive, dolphins do have no right at disposal anyway :  they're just « res nullius » (thing available for anyone) when they are free and, when they are captive, a simple « good », an asset or a property that you can sell or buy or freely destroy if you want. If some laws (CITES, Marine Mammal Protection Act ) were written in order to protect them, it's only because some cetaceans are considered as  "endangered species", like coral reefs or spiny anteaters, not because they 've got exceptional cognitive abilities which could make us better understand our own way of thinking our becayuse they are endowed with fascinating "alien" cultures.  Even activists rarely denounce this incredible situation and never explain WHY they choose to protect dolphins and whales rather than pandas or rhinos....   And yet, we know today for sure that most of the cetaceans  are highly intelligent and socialised beings.  We know also that they are able to understand grammar and abstract concepts, that they are endowed with real cultural traditions transmitted by parents to children, that they get their own whistled personal names,  that they're fully aware of themselves as an « I », that they respect social ethics and at last, that they use in the wild a communicational system as sophisticated – or maybe more – than the human language.

Considering these scientific facts, it is quite hard to admit that living creatures, endowed with reason, language and familial life could be killed as fishes or arbitrarily be confined in a concrete jail, as if it was only a « thing ».

The roots of evil

2500 years before, ancient Greeks told that only Greeks were real humans, because they were talking Greek language. All others people were Barbarians. Until the dawn of our century, we still refused Africans, Aboriginal, Inuit, Pygmies, Indians and all other « coloured people » a real human status. We still were hunting Tasmanian tribes like rabbits and we exhibited « savage black people » in our universal expositions. These people didn't look or live exactly as the dominant European nations of the time and that's why they couldn't be referred as « men ».  Today, in the name of the same blindness, we refuse aquatic-thinking persons any right or legal protection, under the only pretext that they've got flippers instead of arms! … But this blindness is not a result of random. This blindness is wanted, well kept, it is the core of our ideologies, and it is the ultimate taboo of our corpses-eating societies that no one is allowed to trespass.

Colonialism based itself on racist ideology, which made possible and admissible its most horrible  atrocities. Otherwise, how to deport human slaves from Africa to America without feeling guilty?

In the same way, the present sea pillaging and industrial animal slaughter for the benefit of a few numbers base themselves on specist ideology.
This way of thinking, directly inspired by animal-machine René Descartes theories, is now scientifically obsolete but it remains the privileged tool of capitalist economy and major fisheries.

Reinforcing, with the help of media and manageable scientists, the wrong dichotomy between so-called « animals » and « humans », denying them any access to the « true consciousness » (which one?), anthropocentrism allows us to commit without any culpability acts such as vivisection, corrida's, battery farming, delphinarium exhibitions, hunting, whaling or intensive fishing.

Civil rights for our non-humans equals

In the name of wider human ethics, the time is come to claim that a status of « person » or of « right subject» must be given to all sentient beings, which share with us the main capabilities building our own « humanity », reason and self-awareness.

These two main features are namely designed as basis of our humanity by "The Human Rights Declaration" (1948) which says in its first article that "Humans are endowed by reason and consciousness", and adds in its second article that "all rights and liberties are given to those endowed with reason and consciousness) without any distinction of race, sex, language, politic opinion, national origin, fortune, birth, or any other situation"…as "another species»?

Ultimately, what is making us "human" ? Our skin's color ? Our size ? Our genes ? Or rather our powerful mind wide open on reality  and far beyond most of the other minds ? Nevertheless, we were not alone to make this spectacular psychic jump. 
At the time when we were still savannah-chimps breaking their first flint tools, some other mammals made the same choice we did : they choose the path of intelligence and social cooperation, they climbed up the scale of thought and reflection. 

Nowadays, we can maintain that the main animals which match with these criteria are apes, including humans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orang-utans, highly encephalized cetaceans, as dolphins, sperm-whales or rorquals, elephants et maybe even some birds as parrots or crows.

Quoting the words of the Great Ape Project, we demand the extension of the community of equals to include all sentient beings sharing the above–mentionned capabilities, formerly called «human» but existing eslsewhere than in Humans. 

"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
The lives of members of the community of equals are to be protected. Members of the community of  equals may not be killed except in very strictly defined circumstances, for example, self-defence.

2. The Protection of Individual Liberty
Members of the community of equals are not to be arbitrarily deprived of their liberty; 
if they should be imprisoned without due legal process, they have the right to immediate release. 
The detention of those who have not been convicted of any crime, or of those who are not criminally liable, should be allowed only where it can be shown to be for their own good, or necessary to protect the public from a member of the community who would clearly be a danger to others if at liberty.
In such cases, members of the community of equals must have the right to appeal, either directly or, if they lack the relevant capacity, through an advocate, to a judicial tribunal.

3. The Prohibition of Torture
The deliberate infliction of severe pain on a member of the community of equals is regarded as torture, and is wrong.

In this perspective and owing to the fact these cetaceans reached an especially high point of intellectual and sensitive evolution, we have to consider them as «free nations of the ocean» benefiting of the right of any people to self-determination.

Whale murder must be considered as a crime Whale's meat ingestion must be considered as cannibalism. Captures in the wild must be considered as abductions. Dolphin confinement must be considered as a slavery act.

Back to Slavery Page

Back to Homepage