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12 000 rally online for husky
22/06/2007 16:34 - (SA)
Verashni Pillay
Johannesburg - A young South African has gathered online support from thousands of people against a man alleged to have beheaded his husky puppy with a chain-saw, thanks to social networking site Facebook.
Jonathan Judelman, 26, describes himself as an environmentally aware person who tries to make small changes to help the world.
But his latest "small change" - a petition to make sure the accused, Phillip Matthysen, receives the maximum sentence if convicted - now has signatures of support from over 12 000 people from across South Africa, in just two days.
Phillip Matthysen, from Mpumalanga, allegedly sliced through his husky dog's head on February 22 with a petrol-driven chain-saw after it killed his macaw parrot.
Matthysen was arrested on February 23 and provisionally charged with animal abuse a day after the incident. He was later freed on bail and will appear in court on June 24.
If convicted, Matthysen faces a potential R20 000 fine or three years jail time.
'More than they bargained for'
Judelman told News24 he first stumbled across the story on the internet on Wednesday.
He then started a group on social networking site Facebook, asking for electronic signatures for a petition he hoped would meet the 2 500 mark by the time the case went to court.
"We thought 2 500 was a reasonable bet," he said.
Judelman says he was contacted the next day by one of his Facebook friends, Lara Pietersen, who set up a website to gather more signatures.
At the time of talking to News24, Judelman had over 1 000 signatures on Facebook and 11 000 signatures on the "Husky Justice" website.
"To be honest this thing has exploded," Judelman told News24 on Friday. While Judelman acknowledged that electronic signatures like the ones he was gathering may not hold as much water as a handwritten ones, he was still optimistic.
People are 'sick' of this
"The objective is not really to demand something but more to create the sense that there is massive sentiment against this guy and against animal cruelty in this country generally," he said. "We want to make sure this guy goes to jail."
A lawyer has told News24 that any petition is inadmissible in court. "All it shows is the outrage of the community," she said. "It might be relevant at the sentencing stage."
Judelman also told News24 he is in the process of organising a protest outside the court on the day the case is heard, to express the community's disgust.
"There's a sense that people are absolutely sick of the fact that animals don't have rights because of the kind of gaps in our legislative frameworks."
The important thing in all of this is how this would never have happened without these sites," said Judelman, acknowledging how he has been able to get so many people's attention in so short a space of time.
"Traditional media is not something that would have allowed us to achieve what we have in the last 36 hours."
Visit the "Husky Justice" site at www.ecosystem.co.za/HuskyJustice.asp and the Facebook group here.
- News24
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