I am a regular visitor to Cyprus and read their on-line papers. The story is a few weeks old and has caused some uproar on the island. Animal cruelty is very common on the island as many Cypriots just don't see cats and dogs as anything more than vermin. Over the Christmas period a driver dragged a dog on a rope behind his car while driving through Limassol at high speed. Some of what is seen on the island would bring tears to the eyes of the hardest nut.
Part of the problem seems to be that a lot of the people don't take ownership of the animals so they go feral and the population explodes to nuisance proportions. The nuisance then seems to bring out the worst in some of the people.
A bigger part of the problem is that the Government are good at passing laws, but sh;t at enforcement. The politicians are very good at paying lip service to EC laws and norms but don't like to upset their own people - an example is the public smoking ban resulting in ashtrays being removed from tables but smokers being given plastic cups for their ash - in other words they look like they have a law when the reality is that they don't. There is a culture problem wherein complaints are met with a simple UKIP style 'go back to your own country' reply alongside comments about British fox hunting/badger culling etc.
Having said all that, the majority of Cypriots seem to be lovely people who care for animals and in reading their press it does strike me that the winds of change are blowing, however slowly.
