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In the aftermath of last week’s demolition of a pet market in Lahore, which many business owners said resulted in the deaths of their animals in their stores, Ayesha Chundrigar, who runs the Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation, one of Karachi’s largest animal shelters, is asking an important question: why do pet markets still exist?

In a series of stories posted to Instagram on Tuesday, the animal rights activist highlighted the dreadful conditions animals are kept in at such markets. Citing her experiences working to improve conditions in Karachi’s pet markets, she said she had no sympathy for the shopkeepers she’d seen crying over the incident, who were “not crying for the love of these animals,” but were instead “crying because they have lost millions of rupees that they would have made over the prolonged suffering of these animals”.

Chundrigar, one of the biggest names in animal welfare in the country, has rescued thousands of stray animals from the streets of Karachi through her foundation, housing more than 2,000 at its shelter. She spent three years trying to improve the conditions of Karachi’s Empress Market and led a Covid-era operation to rescue animals that had been abandoned there when the country went into lockdown.

The activist said she had seen exactly how much shopkeepers cared for animals during her pandemic rescue operation, when she found that 70 per cent of the animals in the market had died in the time it took for her to get permission from the authorities, the rest were emaciated and using what life they had left in them to cry for help.

Chundrigar said she had tried educating shopkeepers on proper animal care and even offered free medical checkups, treatment and supplies, only to find out they “knew that keeping animals locked in cages as opposed to letting them run free is wrong, but they did it anyway”. She said the animals she interacted with were often starved and running high fevers or cold and lifeless, barely being kept alive to sell in either case.

The activist also criticised the culture of consumption surrounding pets, where “someone buys [an animal] to entertain their spoilt kid for a day and then they return the animal after the kid is bored”. She said animals begin to “fall apart” afterwards and shopkeepers just slowly let them die.

Addressing the demolition of the Bhati Chowk pet market directly, Chundrigar said that between the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) and the shopkeepers, “being on either side right now is being on the side of the abuser”. She said the only two choices for the animals were to “be prisoners” or “die”.

The LDA demolished an illegally constructed pet market near Lahore’s Data Darbar shrine on November 5. Traders whose shops were demolished alleged said they had not been given prior notice to evacuate their animals, which they say were buried under the rubble as a result. The LDA said prior warning had been given and denied claims that any animals had been killed as a result of their actions.

Chundrigar said if the shopkeepers had been given a warning, they would simply move the animals to “dingy warehouses”, which she said was no better than the life they lived in the market. Giving the animals to the authorities wouldn’t have helped either, she said, saying they couldn’t effectively manage Pakistan’s zoos and would likely have done little to care for “animals that are replaceable in a heartbeat”.

She said animals are only seen as important in Pakistan if they entertain us, feed us or make us money, adding that the only officially sanctioned places for them were zoos, pet markets or slaughterhouses. She lamented how the only choices animals seemed to have were to “either suffer for the little bit of life they have in this world or to die a despicable death”.

The activist said now was not the time to “ask for justice for the shopkeepers, which is not equivalent to justice for animals”, or to “fight over the demolition for which we know we will never get a straight answer”. Instead, she said, we must call for a complete ban on pet markets to “stop the suffering of animals once and for all”.