SPAIN GRANTS CIVIL RIGHTS TO APES
Move Sets Off Worldwide Rights Shortage
Is this next?
Richieville News Service – MADRID, SPAIN
A resolution passed by the Spanish Parliament granting some human rights to apes has inadvertently set off a worldwide humans rights crisis. Governments across the globe now say that rights they had planned to extend to human beings are being taken instead by gorillas, chimpanzees and other primates.
“We were going to allow free and fair elections, giving everyone the right to vote, but now we can’t,” said General Than Shwe, chief of Myanmar’s ruling military junta. “Instead we had to give those rights to a bunch of orangutans. I guess I’ll just have to go on being a dictator. Darn it!”
In Zimbabwe, a spokesman for President Robert Mugabe echoed the Myanmar strongman’s sentiments. “We were just about to stop hacking off the arms and legs of the opposition party,” George Charamba told reporters in Harare. “Too bad all the democracy got used up by chimpanzees.”
Spanish legislators insisted that their resolution, which is designed to protect apes from experimentation and exploitation, would have no effect on the availability of rights for human beings. But their arguments were strongly rebutted by government officials in dozens of countries who insisted that there was a finite amount of civil liberty in the universe.
Among those citing the rights for apes measure was the Ministry of Justice in Saudi Arabia, which said it was shelving a plan to grant women the right to drive cars so bonobos could have better conditions in zoos. In Russia, President Dmitry Medvedev told reporters that he was forced to continue shutting down news shows critical of the government in order to allow gorillas the right to free speech.
At the U.S. detainee prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, military officials had a somewhat different reaction. “We never realized apes should have due process under the law,” said chief prosecutor Lt. Col. Jake Manfried. “Does that mean they can be held as enemy combatants?”
Reporters seeking a representative of the ape viewpoint were disappointed when Bongo, a chimpanzee at the Madrid Zoo, refused comment. He did however, bare his teeth and throw feces at anyone who came near his cage.
