(ANSA) – NEW YORK, JUN 15 – Happy is not happy: or at least not the animal rights activists of the Nonhuman Rights Project, the organization that in the last four years has fought in court to have the 50-year-old female recognize elephant the status of person and obtain his release from the Bronx Zoo where the pachyderm has been imprisoned since 1977.
The Nonhuman Rights Project had invoked the habeas corpus to apply to Happy a fundamental right for a human being: that of personal inviolability that protects against unjust incarceration. After years of legal skirmishes, the New York Court of Appeals has decided by a majority that, while Happy and all the other elephants are “intelligent beings who deserve care and compassion”, they cannot be considered people and are therefore not illegally incarcerated. in the zoo.
With the ruling, the court validated a lower-level court decision that had already rejected Nonhuman’s request to transfer Happy to a wildlife oasis where the elephant could have moved more freely than the enclosure it is in. remained locked up for most of her long life.
Nonhuman is a non-profit that fights, so far without success, to have at least some animal species recognized the status of “legal persons” including, in addition to elephants, chimpanzees’. In Happy’s case, New York’s largest zoo had resisted, claiming that the elephant was not illegally locked up and that her staff has been dedicating to her for years the care “that a magnificent animal like her deserves”.
Born in freedom and baptized with the name of one of Snow White’s dwarves – in Italian it would be Gongolo – Happy is treated with compassion, said the zoo, she has contact with other elephants and a close relationship with her human interfaces: “Allo Bronx Zoo thinks about what’s best for Happy, not in general terms, but as an individual with a unique and distinct personality, “the organization said. (HANDLE).
Source: Ansa
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