Easter / Slaughter is not love

On the afternoon of Holy Tuesday, about a hundred activists stood silently for two hours in Syntagma Square, in a peaceful protest to remind the world that our customs have victims.

Over 2,000,000 baby lambs and goats are slaughtered each year to end up on our plates for a single day of celebration.

Their lifeless bodies lie on our plates as shapeless masses of meat to be consumed without any moral inhibitions.

Speciesism prevents us from recognizing that there were living beings like us, that they too wanted to live as we do, that their lives have intrinsic value like ours.

“There’s no right way to kill someone who doesn’t want to die,” read the activists’ placards, and that’s the absolute truth. No animal wants to die, all want to live, they hurt, they have feelings, consciousness of themselves and the world around them.

So let’s recognize their dead bodies in our plates.

Let’s try to see them with the eyes of the heart.

Let us also consider how paradoxical and contradictory it is to celebrate the Resurrection “from the dead”, the ultimate expression of His Love, by causing pain, fear, anguish and death to millions of other beings.

We can stop the genocide of other beings in the name of religion, tradition and customs.

We can celebrate Easter bloodlessly, without victims.

We can create new peaceful customs based on love and respect for all animals, human and non-human.