On Friday, May 11th members of the Long Island Animal Defense League (LI-ADL) ventured into Midtown Manhattan to converge upon the offices of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). PIA has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, as they shipped 64 beagle puppies from Marshall Farms in upstate NY to HLS & other labs in the UK from JFK Airport. PIA also has a horrific safety record leading to their banishment from much of the EU. The building that houses PIA’s offices was being picketed by a local union, accompanied by a blow up rat implying that the building contractors were rats, of which we empathized with minus the speciesist rhetoric.

Activists went up to the offices of PIA to confront their company’s officials, who were saying their prayers…literally! It was Friday afternoon which is a time of prayer for Muslim men, according to the female receptionists. When the men returned we had dialogue with Rashid Farookee, who is the General Manager of PIA. He calmly explained that PIA has ceased to do business with HLS claiming that it was an accidental shipment a couple of years ago that will never happen again. Unfortunately, Mr. Farookee could only give us his word. However, he vowed to put it in writing shortly.

The other conversation took place with Haider Ali-Khan, the Cargo Manager of PIA. He was not as calm, instead asking why “you people keep contacting me”. This was the first inquiry by the ADL, but Mr. Ali-Khan is not familiar with autonomous individuals expressing compassion. Instead, he said that shipping the beagles was a lucrative $1 million business that broke no laws. However, he said PIA stopped shipping beagles due to immense pressure on them to which an activist responded that he had no sympathy for PIA. That said, Mr. Ali-Khan said his company is no longer involved with HLS but would not provide any proof and said it was not his responsibility. He kept complaining about the e-mail inquiries, yet refused to put anything in writing to stop the e-mails and phone calls from coming in. On that note, the receptionist was very sympathetic to our plight and provided us with Mr. Ali-Khan’s phone numbers. His office number is (718) 656-4040 x230, while his cell phone number is (917) 836-7179. A local university student was purchasing a plane ticket to Pakistan. She expressed shocked to learn about the cruelty PIA supported. We wished her a safe flight, which was a dubious occurrence given PIA’s past.

Until the PIA officially stops exporting cruelty, we’ll be importing their names and addresses to our compassionate comrades.