Airline must explain pet’s death
Who — or what — killed Simon the rabbit? Late last month, Simon, a 3-foot giant rabbit straight out of central casting for critters with adorable personalities, was found dead after a trans-Atlantic flight from London to Chicago. To add insult to intrigue, Simon had traveled on United — the same airline pilloried earlier in the month for having a paying customer dragged off a plane.
Simon, one of the world’s biggest rabbits, had been purchased from a rabbit breeder in Britain and put on the flight to Chicago to rendezvous with its new American owner. Normally, a flight across the Atlantic for a pet would not be a big deal if handled correctly. Every year, thousands of pets fly in airline cargo holds without incident.
Guy Cook, an attorney representing the American owner of the rabbit, revealed that Simon’s last hours were anything but routine. According to the lawyer, Simon may have been locked in a freezer during the flight and kept in a freezer for up to 16 hours after the flight.
Cook’s clients are demanding an independent investigation into the rabbit’s death. Unfortunately, United cremated Simon before he could undergo an autopsy.
United probably assumes it will have to write a big check to ameliorate the outrage of the family and is probably prepared to do so. Still, it is in the public’s interest to understand what went wrong on Simon’s flight across the Atlantic.
African nation reels from 3 disasters
Three recent disastrous events in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, indicate that it may be approaching another meltdown point, not at all the first in its history.
The highly contagious disease Ebola, the outbreak of which in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa in 2014 became a global concern, has reappeared, not for the first time, in northeast DRC, in the region of Kisangani. The area where it has appeared is so remote that even Doctors Without Borders is having a hard time getting personnel and supplies into it.
The second event, potentially catastrophic in its implications, is the killing of two human-rights workers, one Swedish and the other American, who were inquiring, on behalf of the United Nations, into reports of other killings, perhaps even by DRC soldiers, in the southcentral region of the country.
If these two killings signal a trend, violent actions against international workers, the implications for delivery of health care, education and other services in the DRC will be grave. International peacekeeping forces will not be sufficient to provide protection to these workers, and the services may disappear.
The third disaster was the escape last week of perhaps as many as 4,200 prisoners from Makala prison, the main lockup in Kinshasa, the DRC’s capital. An anti-government group attacked the prison to free its leader, Ne Muanda Nsemi, imprisoned by the government of President Joseph Kabila.
At the moment, with the occurrence of the three recent incidents outside of and scornful of governmental authority, prospects for orderly, credible elections, a peaceful transition and even peace and quiet in the meantime do not look good at all. Kabila may try to use them as an excuse to stay on, reaching for “President for Life” status.