January 18, 2012 Istanbul � A group of around 50 people from Freedom To Earth Association and several fractions gathered to protest the 6th International Leather & Fur Fair. They exposed this bloody business sector, which is all about grimness and torture for animals, in front of the T�yap Fair Convention and Congress Center. Sound of Resistance, Initiative of Ergene River, various animal rights activists and anarchists supporting the liberation of animals took place in the fair agora.

"Cruelty has never been that fancy" written on the main placard, the crowd first hit the drums hard to move by the rhythm of the music and then started walking, shouting slogans, toward the center square of the fair. A minor tumult occurred between the protesters and the press members, who intended to film the activists with masks on, in order to manipulate the action. So after that, the crowd kept walking and shouted slogans, such as "Freedom to Humans, Animals and the Earth", "Murderers inside, Tyranny on animals everywhere", "Smash the cells, inside and out", "Murderer of Ergene is the leather industry", "Exploit, Torment, Massacre. Fur, NO! Leather, NO!", "RIOT-DESTRUCTION-ANARCHY", "Employer to worker, All to foxes: Tyranny everywhere, so is the resistance!", "What does the government is massacre", "Don�t eat, don�t chop, don�t kill", "Long live the animal liberation!", "Fur, leather, meat; all mean killing", "Revolt against the slaughterhouses, the vivisection, circuses, farms, fur, leather, sacrifices, pet-shops and shelters!"

Anarchist activists first did stencils and sprayed slogans on the signboards of animal and environment murderer McDonald�s, on the entrance and around of the fair field about "Animal Liberation" and veganism. Then, right after a street performance, the crowd headed toward the main entrance and threw flambeaus and paint bombs to the doors, especially in red to represent this bloody business sector. These bombs hit the cops and private security guards.
 Meanwhile, a minor scuffle occurred between the cops and the activists. In the press announcement, Freedom To Earth Association activists re-stated that they stand for the liberation against various forms of oppressing all living creatures on the earth and the disaster the fur & leather business begets thru harming the environment. The group finished the meeting then and left the field.

The press announcement of Freedom To Earth Association:

To the press and public;

We, as Freedom To Earth Association, protest the 6th International Fur & Leather Fair and T�YAP Fair Convention and Congress Center hosting this event. Because inside there, companies that exhibit their fashionable leather & fur products, are making tons of money by slaughtering animals constantly and all around the world thru the industrial capitalism.

Every year, more than 50 million animals are being butchered just for their furs. %85 of those animals have to spend all their lives in very tight-fitting cages, one on the top the other and without food and water. Animals living in that kind of frightening conditions get sick and/or maimed all the time due to the total absence of health and security measure. They cannot even get a single decent treatment during their whole lifespan. Especially the wild ones get to hurt themselves physically and gnaw their bodies because of the slavery and unbeknownst tyranny of the human being.

Animals that got caught during their natural life or were unnaturally born slaves are exposed to remorseless torments while they are being slaughtered just for seller�s profit and buyer�s vanity. While the cats, dogs and raccoons in China get skinned alive and thrown away to eventually die slowly in pain, in Canada, the sea calves get murdered by spiked bats smashing in their skulls. Applying electric shocks in vagina, poisoning by chemicals, boiling alive, neck-breaking and seizing by traps and springe are just some of the cruel torments applying on the animals that are able feel the physical pain just like the humans do. The fur & leather industry even promotes the methods, such as giving electric shocks thru an inserted metal stick in the animal�s rectum since it gives the least damage to its fur. So that tendency proves how capitalism commoditizes the living nature for financial gaining.

We know that furriers use toxic chemical called "formaldehyde" to process and increase their products� durability. Comparing to artificial fur manufacturing, use of those chemicals cause 15 times more environmental pollution. Besides, fur farms are frighteningly responsible from millions of enslaved animals� wastes leaking into the groundwater and rivers along with tons of ammonia interfering the atmosphere. The chemicals that are being used in the leather industry are messing up the environment as well. Ergene River in Thrace being a deadly danger for living species around it, is one of the "feats" of leather manufacturing. Also we hereby proclaim that we are against the artificial leather & fur industries as well since they are causing serious damages to the nature too.

Although we do not approve the existence, the continuity and laboring for these sectors, we must mention about their life extorting mindset that does also not care the health of their employees at all and it�s not a coincidence. Well, the horrible procedures applied on animals nowadays, have had been applied on humans too, especially during the slavery times. The dirtiest works of leather & fur business are having done by workers impoverished by capitalism and this makes the workers remorseless toward the oppressed. People who have to work in unsupervised ateliers-factories get to face with allergic illnesses and carcinoma due to damaging effects of toxics. In Bolu � Gerede, leather workers went to strike because of the lack of humanely working conditions and so they got exposed to police�s pepper gas and violence supported by capital and the government. We did not forget what DESA workers experienced before and during their resistance when they got fired just because of being union members. So this business sector is victimizing humans just like the environment and the animals, in order to pursue its bloody presence.

The anthropocentric frame of mind imposed on us, and the moral fiber that legitimates the capitalism are constantly destroying animals, humans and the nature carelessly; discriminations like speciesism, racism and sexism are different ways of the dominance and are basically connected to each other. We want every kind of discrimination, hierarchy and imperative correlations to end, otherwise humans will keep being causatives of many disasters thru this wicked consumption culture. We, as Freedom To Earth Association, stand for the liberation of all species against every kind of hegemony and refuse any kind of grimness and discrimination on the living beings. We want it to be known that the will of destroying animals is also destroying the humanity. We manifest that, we don�t have to persecute animals for clothing or nourishment, there is anything acceptable about this cruelty and every branch of the whole animal industry must come to an end. So in this context we say that all of the companies slaughtering animals, exploiting people and devastating the environment and the governments permitting this atrocity are all killers. We hereby invoke all people, who respect the life and the fundamental rights, to stop using leather & fur products and fight with capitalist corporations that exploit the livings and destroy the nature.

Freedom to Humans, Animals and the Earth!

VİDEOS and PHOTOS of ACTION: http://www.internationala.info/index.php/isyan/hayvan-kurtulusu/3164-eylemciler-derikuerk-fuarn-bast.html