SuppliedA vegan activist has shared footage of herself covered in blood after getting shot at through her car window by a farmer for ‘rescuing’ 16 rabbits.
Activist Mia spoke of the terrifying moment on social media, telling her followers how the farmer was ‘extremely aggressive’ and ‘attacked’ the group she was with before police arrived.
The alleged assault occurred shortly after Mia, along with a group of activists, entered a rabbit farm in Spain and ‘rescued 16 lives,’ she told her followers.
You can watch the video Mia shared on Instagram below:
Sitting inside a car looking visibly distressed, the activist described how she had been driving along in the car when all of a sudden the window ‘exploded’ from a gunshot and glass went everywhere.
With the video, Mia described the events of that day and said after the group had taken the rabbits from the property, the farmer ‘strangled activists and smashed their heads in with metal poles’.
After the police arrived and told the group to leave, Mia said the farmers chased them down the motorway at 200kmph (124mph) before following them down a side road.
Mia wrote:
They blocked us into a dead end and surround the car with 5 other farmers’ cars. They were banging on the windows, shouting and threatening us.
We called the police who arrived after an hour. They diffused the situation and escorted us to a ‘safe place’. We asked them to escort us home but they refused and said we would be okay.
They let us go and 10 minutes later back on the motorway one of their call pulled up alongside us and shot at us. The window exploded in my face and there was a lot of blood from all the glass.
We’re currently at the hospital and waiting to go to the police station to report this crime.
SuppliedMia has since said she had to disable the comments on her Instagram post because of a ‘high number of death wishes and threats’ – however MailOnline reports many were quick to condemn her actions, with some calling her a ‘thief’ among other things.
The activist is resolute she and her friends did the right thing though, stating: ‘The most important thing is that the non-human animals are safe’. She added that they are ‘far from that hell hole’ now and she doesn’t want any of this to be about her.
Questioning how we can ‘expect [farmers] to care for animals’ if ‘this is how they treat humans,’ Mia ended by saying: ‘despite everything, I am just happy that those 16 lives are free from harm’.
SuppliedRabbit farming is extremely popular in Spain; a report by the Publications Office of the European Union found rabbit farming is highly concentrated in three countries, which represent 83 per cent of total EU production.
Spain is the largest producer with 48.5 million rabbits slaughtered in 2016 alone, followed by France with 29 million rabbits’ slaughtered and Italy with approximately 24.5 million.
The number of farms in Spain decreased by 40 per cent in the last 10 years, primarily due to a move towards ‘greater professionalisation’, in which farms are becoming bigger in size and more specialised – meaning many smaller farms are unable to keep up.
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A Broadcast Journalism Masters graduate who went on to achieve an NCTJ level 3 Diploma in Journalism, Lucy has done stints at ITV, BBC Inside Out and Key 103. While working as a journalist for UNILAD, Lucy has reported on breaking news stories while also writing features about mental health, cervical screening awareness, and Little Mix (who she is unapologetically obsessed with).