If Oliver can do it why can't Matthew the Chimp???

 

Strasbourg: Matthew, 26, and his supporters hope to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. But he won't be able to give evidence on his own behalf since he is a chimpanzee.

Animal rights activists led by British teacher Paula Stibbe are fighting to have Matthew legally declared a ‘person' so she can be appointed as his guardian if the bankrupt animal sanctuary where he lives in Vienna is forced to close. A businessman has offered a substantial amount to cover his care, but under Austrian law only humans are entitled to have guardians.

I too am ‘human': Matthew the chimp

The country's supreme court has upheld a lower court ruling which rejected the activists' request to have a trustee appointed for Matthew. So now 36-year-old Stibbe and the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories have filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Stibbe, who is from Brighton but has lived in Vienna for several years, says she is not trying to get the chimp declared a human, just a person. "Everybody who knows him personally will see him as a person. In his home in the African jungle, he would have been well able to look after himself without a guardian," she said. "Since he has no close relatives, I am doing this as the person closest to him," Stibbe added.

The legal wrangle began in February 2007, when the sanctuary where Matthew lives with another chimp, Rosi, plus a crocodile filed for bankruptcy protection.

Eberhart Theuer, the animal rights group's chief legal adviser, said there is a legal precedent to appoint a guardian for an individual incapable of expressing himself.  Theuer said, "As long as Matthew is not recognised as a person, he could be sold abroad or killed for economic reasons. His life depends on this decision. This case is about the fundamental question: Who is the bearer of human rights? Who is a person according to the European Human Rights Charter?". 

A spokesman for the court in Strasbourg said, "Any application regarding this chimpanzee will be considered at a primary level by a magistrate and a lawyer before we decide whether it deserves a full-blown hearing."