While I may not know everything about the culture in France, it doesn’t take much to see that taking an animal from a homeless person is wrong, especially when one doesn’t have any good reason for doing so.

On Sept. 24 ‘The Huffington Post’ reported on a video, one that has quickly traveled around the world. The video posted online shows members of an animal rights group in France taking a homeless man’s dog by force. It doesn’t make sense, why any animal rights group would ever do something this stupid.

Making matters worse is the fact that the group responsible, Cause Animale Nord, posted on their Facebook page that they have named the stolen dog ‘Vegan’ and were putting him up for adoption for a fee of €195. The caption with the picture reads that they ‘rescued’ the dog, when in fact they actually stole it from a homeless man for no good reason at all.

Putting more salt on the subject, the post encourages people to take action when the police do nothing to save animals, and justified the action by saying that the homeless man was a ‘Roma’. I’m sorry what? They essentially just justified their actions through rascism, saying that because the man was Romani, a traditionally nomadic and highly persecuted group of people, he could not care for his dog. Cause Animale Nord had no right to take the dog from the man. It didn’t belong to them and they didn’t have any proof that the dog was being abused.

There is a time and place to rescue suffering animals, namely when one has proof of abuse that the animal may have suffered. Until then, they don’t have a leg to stand on. So don’t follow this example, because they had no proof or good justification for taking the dog from the homeless man in the first place, as their only apparent reason racism.

In the end, this simple act they took thinking that somehow it was a good idea has done nothing to help their cause. It only hurts and harms them and the animals they are attempting to “help.”

There is currently a petition online calling for authorities to take a look at the incident.