Photo: World’s No. 1 Pistol-Shooting Ace, Heena Sidhu, Stars in Anti-Hunting Campaign

‘Shoot Selfies, Not Animals,’ Proclaims Gold Medalist in PETA India’s Latest Ad

For Immediate Release:
July 30, 2014

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

She’s taken home gold medal after gold medal, but Heena Sidhu will never use her record-setting pistol skills to hunt and kill animals. That’s why Sidhu—the first Indian pistol shooter to be ranked number one in the world—was eager to team up with PETA India for a brand-new ad campaign that shows her holding her pistol and taking a self-portrait with her phone below the words “Shoot Selfies, Not Animals: Say NO to Hunting.”

Sidhu’s PETA India campaign comes in the wake of controversy surrounding two young women who hunt and kill animals for “fun”: a Texas cheerleader whose photos of endangered animals she’s killed were pulled from Facebook and a 17-year-old model whose hunting photos preceded L’Oréal’s decision to cut ties with her.

In an exclusive video interview with PETA India—whose motto says, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—Sidhu explained why she, like so many kind people, is opposed to hunting. “Hunting is the epitome of cruelty,” she says. “Animals like tigers and leopards and rhinos and elephants have been shot and hunted and poached for their skins and their horns.”

Research shows that 60 percent of animals who are shot escape, only to die slowly and painfully from blood loss, gangrene, dehydration, or starvation. Mother animals who are killed leave behind helpless orphaned babies, who starve to death or are eaten by predators.

For more information on hunting, please visit PETA.org.