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Around 3,000 people have signed a petition created on the website Change.org calling on the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev to toughen punishment for the animal abuse which caused their death or mutilation.

The petition presents fresh examples from the Azerbaijani media as evidence of animal abuse in Azerbaijan. For example, more than 100 shot dogs have been brought to the Dog Box to burn their bodies in the oven. Volunteering animal rights activists found only one living puppy among the corpses. It was all in the other dead dogs' blood.

''Animal abuse has become a common 'practice' in the streets of Baku. If elsewhere, in the countries of Europe we see animals that are not afraid of people and doves flying closer and being fed actually from the hands, in Baku almost every animal, seeing a person, tries to run away from him as far as possible and hide. And this is normal for every day we see a lot of cases of abuse of our smaller brethren,'' Azerbaijani media report.

Leyla Akhoondova, the founder of the Organization for Protection of Stray Animals BARS, told Azerbaijani site 1news.az that she had got an official response to her appeal regarding the case of killing a dog from Baku police official Ali Hajiyev. As the response read, the appeal had been investigated and citizens Aganijat Agaverdi oglu Melikzade and Rafig Amirahmed oglu Mamedaliyev, who had beheaded the dog, had been brought to administrative responsibility being fined 25 manats (around $23.15) each.

''This means that anyone can easily kill a dog, a living being, in the centre of Baku and safely leave paying the fine? In Australia one can get 10 years' imprisonment for cruelty to animals, yet in our country – minimum fine. Still, such cases will go on until there is a real punishment!'' Akhoondova said.

It is also particularly highlighted in the petition that physical cruelty to animals, along with other forms of antisocial behavior (theft, frequent lies, physical cruelty to people), are the clinical descriptions of the symptoms of conduct disorder (F91) according to the International Classification of Diseases. It should also be kept in mind that Islam, the religion of the majority of the Azerbaijani population, prohibits cruelty to living beings.

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Azerbaijani media: Real “genocide” of stray dogs in Baku ahead of European Games