Jonah was a 2-year old stray dog born in the city of Van in Turkey.
Like his fellow stray animals, Jonah’s life was nothing but absolute horror, torture and despair…. Jonah experienced 730 days, 17520 hours of incessant misery. On a lucky day, he could find some rotten, dirty food from the garbage. Even that was a luxury to him, because most other days his stomach was completely empty. Clean drinking water was out of the question anyway (maybe some rain was his only chance of water). But even those “rotten food available” days were scarce for Jonah. He was on the brink of starvation for most of those 17520 hours he managed to survive in a country where dogs get treated as cockroaches to be destroyed.
Just as you would think that life could not get worse for Jonah, it did. On 10 November 2008, Jonah was hit by a car on the highway, and then of course the driver fled the scene. Jonah was left to lie in agony by the side of the road, with his two back legs broken, with his suffering just simply beyond description. With those two back legs broken, Jonah was now only able to crawl and he somehow caught the attention of someone in Van with a heart… A good man who saw Jonah’s misery and called the municipality of Van for help.
But no officer at the municipality of Van helped – Jonah kept crawling in the middle of Van for three days. The municipality could not be bothered to send a vet or anybody to go help him.
On 13 November 2008, the municipality finally bothered to do something. And what they decided to do was to send in a death squad on Jonah. They sent two garbage collectors and a garbage truck to pick Jonah up.
They tied a rope around his neck, picked him up with a shovel, and then tossed him into the garbage truck. Jonah screamed and screamed throughout all of this – everybody else enjoyed it. As Jonah was screaming to the top of his lungs, the people around him simply laughed and watched Jonah’s agony as if they were watching a comedy show. The garbage men then dumped him at the city’s garbage disposal site “out of compassion” the official explanation goes. The garbage men were so compassionate that they thought at least he would have found some food there, the municipality later on explained.
At this stage, Jonah was lying paralyzed in the garbage site, and the way he was handled with a shovel had only made it worse. He suffered irreparable damage to his spine, and even if he had lived, he would have been paralyzed for life.
All hell broke loose on the municipality of Van when footage of Jonah’s torture in the hands of municipal workers was announced on the national media in Turkey. The municipality was inundated with phone calls, not just from Turkey, but from around the world. Under such tremendous pressure, the person who calls himself the mayor of Van was forced to act and sent in a team to go collect Jonah from the garbage site. Jonah thus ended up at the Faculty of Veterinarian Medicine Animal Hospital at the University of Van.
If you can call it that of course – the hospital in Van had very very little to do to treat Jonah because they did not have the facilities there at their disposal to handle a dog as severely damaged as Jonah. This was when once again animal lovers from all over the world offered help. Some offered to send money for Jonah’s treatment, others offered to adopt him, yet others offered to arrange for him to be treated at the best animal hospitals in the United Kingdom and / or the United States….
But it was not meant to be…. Because all of those offers had to be rejected as those offers of help from abroad were “an insult to Turkey’s national pride”. Turkey had its own resources to treat Jonah, they said, and those trying to arrange help for Jonah from abroad were “traitors”. The mayor of Van agreed with all of this, he declared that the dog was going to stay in Van. Period. Jonah was condemned to stay there in Van in the hands of vets who had little if anything to do for Jonah’s welfare…
Jonah’s conditions deteriorated on the morning of 28 November 2008. And he didn’t make it, he died on 1 December 2008. Jonah became a victim of ultra nationalists masquerading as animal lovers and monsters masquerading as humans.
RIP Jonah ♥
America has its share of animal abuse, but nothing like I’ve seen since a friend shared your site with me. 3 of my dogs are rescues, as are my cats and they are amazing. This story brought me to tears and made me bring my pets closer. the people who treated this dog in this way should suffer so. the real tragedy is that they are allowed to produce offspring, who will likely become as evil as they are. the animals of Turkey are lucky to have advocates and voices such as yours and my friend Ece’s. Bless you all for you efforts on behalf of these innocent and magnificent creatures. May those who mete out such evil find justice in the next life that is apt and appropriate.
je n’ai de mots pour qualifier ce que je viens de voir !
Pauvre Jonah….RIP
this is one of the worst things i have ever read, i cried like a baby imagining the pain poor jonah went through.
Something must be done in Turkey to educate these people, they are the lowest form of pond life.
rip jonah. x
i can't find the words i am blinded by tears.R I P Jonah and all that are with you why do the animals
have to suffer. they are the 1st to love even the worst of people. i am so angry
Jonah i love you and you will always be with me in my prayers.God please keep Jonah and all that are with him warm in your arms.Please God soften the hearts of the Governments not only in Turkey but all over the world to stop the cruelty towards animals (dogs cats horses little critters all species)
I am asking this in God's name amen
still crying for jonah.i will never forget this poor pup and his torture.
RIP,little jonah
How can people live with themselves after torturing a poor dog like that?
RIP, Jonah. If only our tears could take back your pain…
this happens everyday in India…:( 🙁
I cannot begin to explain the saddness I feel for this poor animal, I can imagine the other barbaric things that go on with all the animals that are homeless. You can tell a humans nature by the way they treat an animal, if they can treat animals like this I shudder to think how the children are treated.
what a brave little guy. i wish i had been the one to find him. he would never have been dragging himself around the city for days waiting for horrible men to come with a garbage truck. i cry for him and the others like him. sleep well jonah. i hope you are somewhere where you can run free and play all you want.
well, another heart breaking, stomach wrenching story of yet another innocent life coming to a miserable, painful death. unfortunately, despite animal cruelty going on the world over, the middle east and Mediterranean countries are the worst in the category of animal suffering. and sadly, man’s best friend gets the brunt of it. very few people there regard animals, and especially dogs with any compassion. i’m sorry, but when ever i thought of the Van district before, it was always of the lake and beautiful Van cats that originated there. now, i look at it and the Turkish Government with utter disgust (as with all the surrounding countries in the region) for being so heartless and inhumane! i wonder then, why would the Turkish government designate the Angora and Van cat breeds, as well as the Anatolian, Akbash and Kangal dog breeds as national treasures worthy of protection, while all others are treated as nothing?! or is it just show for the western world? yes, islam does deem dogs unclean, but no where has it endorsed the killing or suffering of them. even the Prophet of islam was said to be compassionate with animals and warned against their mistreatment.
Thankyou for sharing this tragic story Viktor. It is almost unbearable to know that Jonah's story is but one of so many that will never be known.
We must all work together to change the attitudes of people about animals. We know that cultural beliefs and ideas about human supremacy fuel brutality and indifference to the suffering of others. Thankyou for being a caring role model of compassion.
THere is a powerful American film called "The Witness" from Tribe of Heart productions, about a construction worker from New York City who has his own indifferent attitude about animals changed so much that he is now a powerful voice for change. It might be worth getting a copy of for people who know English.
We never know where our allies are going to come from, and posters here to this blog should remember that there are many, many caring Turks working for change, and that we must all work in our own backyards to take responsibility for our own particular cultural biases.
I don't believe Jonah 'lives on' in any afterlife, any more than I believe I will meet my own beloved animals 'anywhere else' after I'm dead. I believe that while such thoughts provide comfort for others, it is necessary to concentrate on life here and now, and the right for quality of life and freedom from suffering wherever possible.
I try, by practising veganism, to limit suffering to others, and encourage all to recognize the power of our food choices whenever we do have the priviledge of choice. Thankyou all for caring.
-a conscientious Canadian