As part of the Felix Solidarity Day on the 4th August, activists from Gloucestershire Animal Action unfurled a 12ft by 12ft banner which read “FREE FELIX, STOP THE OXFORD LAB” (See pic below) from the top of the Beechwood Arcade in Cheltenham Towns busy shopping area in Gloucestershire.
The banner was left hanging for around 30-40 minutes before security from the arcade along with community police officers ran to try and apprehend the individual who dropped the banner, although no laws were broken and the roof is accessible via a fire escape with no private property warnings? The banner was eventually taken down by security.
Simultaneous demos were taking place during the banner drop outside Vodaphone and Thomas Cook with a huge amount of public support(to the horror of community police who were told to monitor all protests for the day). four information stalls were set up with loads of speak / vivisection info, petitions, AR and vegan outreach materials were available to members of the public.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Felix, Felix is the name given by vivisector Tipu Aziz to a macaque monkey whom he intends to abuse and torture for the next few years. The irony of his naming should not be lost on us. Tipu Aziz avowedly has no feelings for animals, yet he has chosen a name for the animal that is to be his slave. Aziz has freely admitted: if it was left up to him he would kill animals in order to test cosmetics and Aziz also believes we should be experimenting on Great Apes.
Felix is the monkey who featured in the recent BBC2 documentary, ‘Monkeys, Rats and Me’, aired on 27th November, 2006, which showed the sanitized, ‘acceptable’ face of vivisection that vivisectors want the public to see. The BBC issued an apology to Europeans for medical progress regarding the bias of the documentary maker (this can be viewed here) and invited EMP to be involved in arguing the anti vivisection side of the story in future documentaries.
