Demo Reports - 2nd & 4th December

SPEAK is no longer campaigning against the bricks and mortar of Oxford University’s new animal torture lab, but is now concentrating on the actual animals themselves. The monkeys, dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, rats, mice and others who face a life of unimaginable discomfort and agony trapped inside the laboratory prisons that they will never leave alive.

This is why SPEAK supporters were out on South Parks Road this week continuing the fight against the causing of deliberate animal suffering by this university. Vivisectors can come out with all the inane excuses they like, it doesn’t change the fact that animals suffer from being deprived of their natural environments, from a lack of companionship of their fellow beings, from being handled, poked and prodded and from the often painful procedures that deprive them of their health and minds. And it doesn’t change the fact that we know it causes them suffering – which makes us complicit in this suffering if we don’t get up and do our best to fight against a sick system which allows living animals to be mutilated and tormented in these ways.

The hoardings surrounding the new lab were removed this week to reveal a building surrounded by high fences and security cameras. A building that, despite Oxford University’s claims to the contrary, so many people within the university as well as increasing numbers of members of the public find so controversial, that instead of a high profile opening ceremony to ‘celebrate’ a new building as they usually do, the university only held a highly defensive press conference.

It is high time that the outdated and cruel practise of vivisection was ended, and SPEAK will be fighting against it until that day comes.