Photos: 250+ Fur Coats Sent to Refugees and Others From PETA Members During Freeze

For Immediate Release:
February 28, 2022

Contact:
Brooke Rossi 202-483-7382

To help Afghan refugees and Pakistanis in need during freezing temperatures, PETA and PETA U.K. have sent more than 250 fur coats—all donated by people who experienced a change of heart about wearing fur—to Life for Relief and Development for distribution in villages and refugee camps in northern Pakistan. Video footage and photos from the distributions are available here.

“Freezing temperatures are historically causing catastrophic conditions in several areas of Pakistan. Life for Relief and Development (lifeusa.org) has been helping children for 29 years,” says Life for Relief and Development CEO Dr. Hany Saqr. “We are partnering with PETA to provide children in Pakistan and Afghanistan with humanitarian help in the form of fur coats that help to keep them alive and warm during the harsh winters. Many needy families rely on donations like this.”

“We can’t bring back the animals who were killed for their fur, but people who have decided never to wear fur again are at least able to use their earlier bad decisions to do some good today,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA encourages everyone to give up fur to help the truly needy, who are the only ones with any excuse for wearing it.”

Animals used for fur spend their lives in cramped cages, where they pace frantically back and forth, gnaw on the cage bars, and mutilate themselves before being electrocuted, gassed, or poisoned. Those trapped in nature may suffer for days before trappers arrive to shoot, strangle, beat, or stomp them to death.

PETA has worked with Life for Relief and Development to donate fur items to humans in need for more than 15 years and also sends unwanted furs to homeless shelters and wildlife rehabilitation programs (to be used as bedding for orphaned animals) or uses them in informative displays. A recent PETA U.K. delivery of nearly 100 fur coats almost didn’t make it to Afghanis in need after the Taliban took over Afghanistan—but a persistent local contact managed to get the shipment cleared, allowing Life for Relief and Development to distribute the coats.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.