Albania zoo closed over animal cruelty row

The Tirana municipality has shut down Albania’s only zoo after a video was circulated showing a bloodied horse that had been attacked by a bull while they were kept in the same pen.

The zoo in the Albanian capital was shuttered after the video was published online last week by Animal Rescue Albania, a Tirana-based campaign group.

In an open letter to the city’s mayor Lulzim Basha, Animal Rescue Albania called on the authorities to close the zoo down and end the cruelty towards the animals kept there.

“Shocking is the right word to express the feeling we had when we saw the video,” the group said in its letter.

“It’s unconceivable that the so-called Tirana zoo could operate in conditions that allow cruelties of this kind,” it added.

This is not the first time that the municipality’s management of the zoo has come under fire.

Last year the popular environmental website Mother Nature Network listed Tirana as one of the “six saddest zoos in the world”, describing it as “an animal prison” that is “grossly underfunded”.

Responding to the criticism on Monday, the Tirana municipality blamed the government, arguing that it had blocked it efforts to privatise the zoo.

“As a result of a political order from Prime Minister Edi Rama, the blocking of our project to offer the zoo as a concession has brought about its degradation,” the municipality said in a statement.

But Rama blamed the municipality for the zoo’s poor state, arguing that its conditions would change after his Socialists unseated the current mayor of Tirana, who is also the chairman of the opposition Democratic Party, in the June 21 local elections.

“This was a fight between animals organised by man,” Rama wrote on Facebook.

“After the victory in the June 21 election, we will give Tirana the zoo it deserves,” he added.

By Besar Likmeta