Giorgos Psykharis and Kiki Yappapa are volunteers: almost every day they feed dozens of homeless animals, dogs and cats in the vast territory of the western Parnita. Yesterday, a few kilometers north of Fili, in a hard-to-reach rocky area, two dead horses were found. It wasn’t the first time. Last year they found another one – what was left of it, that is, after most of it was eaten by wild animals. They then alerted the police and the forestry, but no one responded, as they say, “about this dump of souls”, implying that it is a common tactic for those who want to get rid of their horses for any reason, dump them there. .

“Animals do not look old or sick“, – says Rosa Russo, president of the Panhellenic Horse Protection Association “Hippotesis”, “K”. “From my experience, I suspect that they were hunted down and deliberately driven onto a rock – and to their death. Someone owned them did not want them anymore? Did anyone care that they roamed freely in the area? Were they shot? They were poisoned? That is why we are asking for an autopsy and trace them, if, of course, they are electronically marked so that answers can be given. They also need to be removed urgently from the site, because if, for example, they are poisoned and become food for other predatory animals or scavengers, the losses will be many times greater.

“Hippothesis” from the very beginning set as its goal the introduction by the Greek state of the European regulation for the identification and registration of equine animals. “In 2008 we started our work. Then everyone laughed at us. There was no one who would help us with legal costs or cooperate with us. In 2023, the situation remains tragic. Horses in our country are animals of a lesser God,” says Ms Rousseau. “After all, the older generation treated their horses, mules and donkeys better. As long as they needed them, they respected them to a certain extent. They were ‘tools’, but at least as long as their usefulness lasted, they lived decently.”

The Panhellenic Federation for Charity and Environmental Protection also asks in a letter to find and punish those responsible for the murder of Parnita’s horses.

“From the hooves of the horses, which are visible in the photographs, one can understand that they were very well looked after. Perhaps they died of natural causes in some equestrian club, and their owner, due to the exorbitant cost of cremation, asked those who deal in this particular way to bury them. The corresponding “tariff” is 500-600 euros,” says Thanasis Heliotis, vice president of the Hellenic Horse Protection Association, another possible version. “Instead of burial and the difficulties it entails, a simple and inexpensive rock solution was chosen. It’s a defilement, that’s how I see it. I can’t even think of the possibility of them being thrown out alive. However, that wouldn’t surprise me. It still happens all the time in our islands.”

Indeed, cases of horse abuse are very common. A few days ago, a pasteurized horse (i.e. with tied legs) was hanging on a hillside in Jia due to exhaustion. Similarly, the donkey met a painful death in Koropi. Despite the change in legislation, animals remain defenseless, and offenders, with rare exceptions, go unpunished.