Three Days of Demos : 29th - 31st July 2010

SPEAK supporters were out in force for a long weekend of demos against the animal experiments carried out by Oxford University. There was a large presence outside the new large torture lab on South Parks Road on Thursday 29 July, whilst Friday and Saturday saw even more activists holding highly visual demos outside graduation ceremonies.

Even though this campaign against Oxford University's animal abuse has been going for over six years, it is testament to peoples determination that nineteen people were present on the regular protest on a week day. The purpose of the Thursday demos is to highlight that inside the innocuous building just across the road, 16 000 animals are being imprisoned, mutilated and killed, just feet from where people walk down the pavements. If SPEAK supporters were not present to highlight this fact, people walking past would be none the wiser.

On Friday and Saturday, whilst those accepting their degrees were celebrating their academic achievements, for the animals being used in experiments by the university it was just another day of living hell. Information was given to those entering and leaving the ceremonies as to the atrocities being suffered by living creatures because of this institution and much support was received by both those passing by and those entering the building. One graduate came out and thanked the SPEAK supporters for "doing a wonderful job", while another family were keen to sign the petition against the university and were astonished that some people seemed more concerned that their day might be ruined than with the suffering of over 150 000 animals every year at the hands of the university researchers. In the time between the day's two ceremonies, some campaigners ventured round the corner onto the High Street where, yet again, they were overwhelmed by the amount of support received from the public; both old and young, local and visiting alike.

Oxford University is not a place of academic excellence, it is a place of pain, suffering and death, and more and more people are coming to realise this, and show their disgust and anger at what this institution does to non-consenting, living beings. Please join us, and help bring an end to the horrors perpetrated against the animals in the labs of Oxford.