Iran: Dog’s Brutalised and Buried Alive

Stray dogs are shot to death in residential streets by city workers while others are buried alive after being thrown into deeply dug grave-pits, which they are unable to jump out of. The dogs sense they are in imminent danger and cling to each other in  terror.

Government worker randomly shoots into pit, at helpless dogs.

Using semi-auomatice weapons, government workers either fire rounds of bullets into the grave, indiscriminately hitting and missing the panicking trapped dogs, which leave many injured, or they simply start back-filling the mass grave with rubble as the panicked dogs desperately try to leap to safety, which they are unable to do. Howling and whimpering the dogs are buried alive.

Being randomly shot at kills some dogs but leaves many injured, howling and whimpering.

Covered in rubble, whimpering can still be heard so to shut the dying dogs up, government workers fire their semi-automatic weapons into the freshly back-filled grave, spraying bullets into the just re-filled dirt and rubble. When the noise of whimpering dogs shut up, they stop firing bullets (BZB.) In sharp contrast, the Prophet Muhammad commanded: “Every animal or bird that is killed unjustly, the day will conflict with his killer” (PBUH)

Government workers congratulate each other, as the surviving but injured dogs whimper and howl.

In 2010 Iran banned all advertisements  for pets, pet food and pet products after powerful cleric Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi issued the fatwa and stressed that, in line with the Islamic tradition, dogs are unclean animals.

Buried alive, Government workers keep firing into the covered over mass grave of dogs, until the whimpering shuts up.

The ban on pet ads and products came about because Ayatollah couldn’t accept and come to terms with the Iranian people’s love for “unclean animals.” Ayatolla Shirazi said dog owners were “blindly imitating the West” and their devotion to animals would result in “evil outcomes” (AAM)

Dog owners used to be able to keep their pets safe by regularly paying fines but Tehran police announced police would capture every dog they encountered [which is possibly code for kill.] The official reason given is said to be religious: Iran’s Islamic law forbids the possession of dogs, considered to be “impure” animals. In the past, several politicians as well as state media outlets had already condemned this practice.

Iranian lady with her loved pet dog.

Although it is forbidden to keep dogs at home, it is not forbidden to sell puppies alongside express-ways, where its reported that puppies are treated very badly and those which are not sold by the end of the day are killed and thrown away as trash.

A 70-year-old man was caught walking his pet dog on the street and he was arrested, sentenced to four months in jail and  given 30 lashes [Shahr Rey, a suburb of Tehran.] An Islamic judge charged the man for “disturbing the public order.”   Domestic animals are forbidden from being taken on to the streets because Islam considers dogs to be impure (Fox News.)

Iranian man publicly receiving lashes.

The association of the dog with the devil may have motivated several attempts at eradicating the animal. The Prophet Mohammad (and later Yusof b. Hajjaj) was said to have ordered all dogs to be put to death but to have modified his order to only apply to black dogs, especially those with two spots (noqtatayn) over their eyes.

The black dog figures prominently in magic. Its satanic connections mean that harming it may bring injury or misfortune to the perpetrator. In Khorassan, it is believed that he who kills a dog will lose a child or seven years of bad luck. Such beliefs may at least partly reflect Pre-Islamic taboos against harming dogs, reinterpreted to conform to the Islamic association of the animal with evil, says Ardeshir Mohassess in Life In Iran.

The following video was filmed by an Iranian dog lover who videoed the aftermath of dogs which had been shot:


This next account took place in a residential street in Tehran at 8am on a Wednesday morning:  a stray dog was quietly sitting near the wall of a house when a bullet ripped into the dog’s stomach in a hail of bullets as other bullets hit the house. The woman of the house ran outside to escape and saw the stricken dog which she had been feeding for some time.

Bleeding heavily, the dog saw her and staggered toward her, with it’s eyes filled with terror. As the woman dropped to her knees, more bullet hits the dog’s front legs. Terrified, the woman got up and ran into a  neighbour’s house. The dog died of it’s injuries and the woman’s house was left badly damaged with bullet holes.

This incident took place in a residential street in Tehran where children played, against a harmless dog whom the woman had been quietly feeding over a period of time. Residents of the street confirmed the dog’s blood was not removed for three days after the incident.

Another neighbour of the woman, an old man, was so terrified by the gunfire that he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalised for two days. Because of the overwhelming hatred of dogs by some people, residents are terrorised with gunfire resulting in their deprivation of peace. Residents who witnessed the brutal attack on the dog are still troubled by the harrowing scene of the injured dog staggering toward the kind woman, as she fell to her knees in grief.

Confiscated Iranian pet dogs in the equivalent of a dog-jail.

Dog killings were already under way when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad imported four puppies from Germany, for himself for his own protection. His behaviour  justifies to the Iranian general public, who were assured that because the puppies were German and they would be trained by Iran dog trainers, it was acceptable for the President to have dogs, but not members of the public, whose pet dogs were and still are being systematically butchered (FoxNews.)

Pet dogs being walked on leashes are being ripped from their owners and placed in compounds, the equivalent of dog-jail, where owners are unable to pay and reclaim their dog. Many of the pets in the video are still wearing walking harnesses and some are even still wearing outdoor coats and decoratively beaded walk-wear.


Iran’s history is closely flanked by it’s Pre-Islamic use of dogs in herding, hunting, war and dog-fights, known as sag-e-kazari which refers to canine warriors or dogs trained for dog fights. Ancient Persian myth says one third of a dogs’ essence is human and that dog was created to protect man’s possessions against wolves, and that a dog can repel evil by it’s mere gaze. Many Persian myths revolves around around dogs being created by God, ultimately to teach man humility (LinA)

The Prophet of Islam showed kindness toward all animals, including dogs, yet the Iranian government have a vendetta to murder all stray dogs and encourage members of the public to join in their killing spree, by paying dog killers with rewards. The hate spree against dogs has resulted in countless dogs being shot but not killed outright. Injured dogs run and take days, sometimes even longer to die painful, drawn-out deaths.

Slaughtered Iranian dogs.

Mistreating animals is considered a sin in Islam. A Muslim is responsible for the care of animals, so much so that an ill-treated animal will testify against the one who abused it on the Day of Judgment. Islam forbids branding animals and killing them in vain, such as for sport. The Prophet Muhammad forbade people to capture birds, burn anthills or whip animals. Even slaughtering animals for food, Islam (requires that the slaughtering be done according to Islamic procedure), which is “humane” and aims to cause the animals as little suffering as possible.  To read more: Open Email to the Muslim Council from Saynotodogmeat.Net.

Iranian dog, targeted by dog killers.

While Iran blames dogs for being unclean, the Iranian government doesn’t seem to have a problem with a general lack of hygiene in and around towns and cities, in areas such as food safety, clinical and hospital waste, road safety, air pollution and contamination of rivers and reservoirs that feed into waters which are used for public consumption, and so on.

It is time the Iranian government show the merci that was shown to them by the Prophet of Islam. Their on-going actions of butchering dogs is no longer a secret and people worldwide are appalled and horrified at the cruelty being perpetrated against companion animals and the Iranian people who defend them.