There is a dearth of information about animal rights legislation on the Internet. Similarly, one cannot easily find information on animals' role in society and Indonesians' perception toward animals.
Nevertheless, I stumbled upon a controversial article about the relationship between consuming dog meat and ethnic groups. According to the non-profit Animal Welfare Organization located in Jakarta, Indonesia, there is a myth that certain ethnic groups scattered across Indonesia eat dogs regularly. For example, the Batak people, predominantly located in North Sumatra, and the Manado people, located in North Sulawesi, are believed to include dog meat in their diet. Why? A part of the reason for this myth's longevity is the lack of a nationwide effort to centralize data on the subject. That is, there is no authority on the subject. So, word spreads by mouth, and the myth becomes further entrenched into the general knowledge of the people.
There are implications for the prevailing stereotype. First, outsiders looking in towards these groups may view their culture as primitive, wild, cruel, and so on. And so, the logic goes, whoever is associated with these two ethnic groups bears a certain marker of sorts: less developed, etc.
Having said that, the Animal Welfare Organization does not imply that consuming dog meat does not happen in Indonesia. And dog meat consumption occurs in the two ethnic groups stated above. Yet, the majority of people in these groups do not take part in the "practice." The article mentions that dog consumption is increasingly less common now than it was a decade ago.
What's more, there is a bottom-up push to expel the practice from the disparate ethnic groups. Animal rights activists and other relevant organizations have sprung up in many of the nation's large cities, a trend that coincides with the expanding economy. There remains more to do, however, but grassroots organizations such as the Indonesian Society for Animal Welfare give us hope.
Comments