China Massacres more than 54,000 Dogs in Rabies Scare
Chinese Government continues killing canines even as populace embraces animal companions
Written for Women's Radio
In a shocking display of cruelty that has triggered an international outcry, Chinese officials in the southeastern county of Mouding in Yunnan Province ordered the brutal execution of at least 54,429 dogs in late July. The reason: a third human death from rabies in a region of 200,000 people.
A massive task force led by the Director of the Public Security Bureau carried out the mass-killing over a five day-period beginning on Tuesday, July 25th. In cities around the county, task force officers stopped guardians who were walking their dogs and beat the animals to death with clubs while their guardians looked on in horror, then tossed the bloody corpses into waiting dump trucks for disposal. Sometimes, officers poisoned the dogs, or killed them by hanging or electrocution. Under cover of night, the officers raided the rural countryside, provoking dogs to bark with loud banging, whistles and firecracker explosions so they could find and bludgeon their canine victims to death. All of this was done under the express orders of the County Government.
To save themselves some work, Mouding County officials also offered guardians a financial incentive of 5 yuan (about 62 cents in the U.S.) to kill their own dogs by July 27th. Guardians faced a horrible choice between putting their own animal companions down using the most humane methods available to them or waiting for the Death Squads to arrive and torture their family members until they lay lifeless. By Sunday, July 30th, over 90% of the county’s dogs were murdered in cold blood; only guard dogs and police dogs were spared.
About 4,000 dogs in Mouding County were already vaccinated against rabies, but these were killed as well because a veterinary official claimed that vaccination is only 85% effective in preventing transmission of the disease. Based on this assessment, public health authorities dismissed vaccination plans as inadequate and pronounced the massacre necessary to safeguard the county’s human population and prevent an epidemic. However, even if it had been the case that killing dogs was the only way to stop an outbreak of the disease, the animals should have been humanely euthanized, not beaten to a bloody pulp. The exceptionally malicious and cruel attacks Public Security Bureau officers perpetrated against China’s dogs and their helpless guardians would be inexcusable under any circumstances.
Some medical and legal authorities blame the Chinese Government for not taking enough preventive measures against rabies. Dr. Francette Dusan, an expert from The World Health Organization (WHO) who specializes in diseases people can contract from animals, criticized China’s rabies control methods, most of which she said “(consist) of purely reactive dog culls.” An editorial in Legal Daily, the newspaper of the central government’s Politics and Law Committee, put it more bluntly: “Wiping out the dogs shows these government officials didn’t do their jobs right in protecting people from rabies in the first place.”
Just days after this atrocity, officials in the city of Jining announced plans to destroy all dogs within a three mile radius where rabies had been found. The city, which is home to approximately 500,000 dogs, has reported 16 human rabies deaths in the past eight months.
Rabies is on the rise throughout China, with 2,375 deaths attributed to the disease reported last year out of a population of approximately 1.2 billion. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China has one of the highest rabies infection rates in the world, second only to India. There are hundreds of millions of canine companions across China, yet only about 3% have received rabies vaccinations.
China’s History of Canine Cruelty
While 2006 is the Year of the Dog – a favorable zodiac sign in Chinese astrology – “man’s best friend” is all too often exploited and abused in this country, one of the few left in the world with no animal welfare laws. Throughout most of China’s history, dogs have been used only as working animals (for hunting or guarding homes and livestock) and for food or fabric (humans still eat their flesh and harvest their fur for clothing). Under Communist doctrine, animal companions were reviled as representations of bourgeois excess. Only in the past two decades or so, since the introduction of neo-capitalist reforms, has the Chinese populace embraced dogs as companion animals.
Even as many Chinese people are learning to appreciate how loyal, affectionate and intelligent dogs are, the attitude of their government toward canines remains generally cold and heartless. For example, in June 2005, the City of Beijing, home to 400,000 canines, legally outlawed all dogs over 35cm (13.7 inches) tall. After the law went into effect, police were officially authorized to enter guardians’ homes and confiscate their beloved companions, despite the fact that dog guardians pay hefty “pet” registration fees to the municipal government every year. The law even allowed officers to indiscriminately beat dogs in front of their guardians without restraint before impounding them.
Millions of dogs (along with cats and other animals) are also killed in China every year for their fur, which is exported to countries around the world. While the sale of dog and cat fur is illegal in the U.S., consumers may not know that they are buying it because dog and cat fur is typically unlabeled or deliberately mislabeled. A controversial undercover video investigation of the Chinese fur industry revealed dogs and cats packed into wire cages and stacked by the thousands onto trucks. Additional video footage shows dogs and cats being strangled and electrocuted to death. Investigators witnessed and have documented animals being skinned alive and thrown onto piles of other skinned animals, some continuing to live for up to 10 minutes afterwards.
Mass dog culls and other savage horrors will continue to take place in China until authorities recognize and respect the shifting cultural attitude towards canines as companions and initiate humane policies reflecting these changes. The Chinese government can start by making rabies prevention through vaccination programs and public education a higher priority.
What You Can Do:
Write, call or fax the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. urging him to push his government to end dog culls and to initiate effective preventive measures against the spread of rabies based on vaccination and public education.
His Excellency Zhou Wenzhong
Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China
Embassy of the People’s Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20008
Tel: (202) 328-2574
Fax: (202) 328-2582
Written for Women's Radio
In a shocking display of cruelty that has triggered an international outcry, Chinese officials in the southeastern county of Mouding in Yunnan Province ordered the brutal execution of at least 54,429 dogs in late July. The reason: a third human death from rabies in a region of 200,000 people.
A massive task force led by the Director of the Public Security Bureau carried out the mass-killing over a five day-period beginning on Tuesday, July 25th. In cities around the county, task force officers stopped guardians who were walking their dogs and beat the animals to death with clubs while their guardians looked on in horror, then tossed the bloody corpses into waiting dump trucks for disposal. Sometimes, officers poisoned the dogs, or killed them by hanging or electrocution. Under cover of night, the officers raided the rural countryside, provoking dogs to bark with loud banging, whistles and firecracker explosions so they could find and bludgeon their canine victims to death. All of this was done under the express orders of the County Government.
To save themselves some work, Mouding County officials also offered guardians a financial incentive of 5 yuan (about 62 cents in the U.S.) to kill their own dogs by July 27th. Guardians faced a horrible choice between putting their own animal companions down using the most humane methods available to them or waiting for the Death Squads to arrive and torture their family members until they lay lifeless. By Sunday, July 30th, over 90% of the county’s dogs were murdered in cold blood; only guard dogs and police dogs were spared.
About 4,000 dogs in Mouding County were already vaccinated against rabies, but these were killed as well because a veterinary official claimed that vaccination is only 85% effective in preventing transmission of the disease. Based on this assessment, public health authorities dismissed vaccination plans as inadequate and pronounced the massacre necessary to safeguard the county’s human population and prevent an epidemic. However, even if it had been the case that killing dogs was the only way to stop an outbreak of the disease, the animals should have been humanely euthanized, not beaten to a bloody pulp. The exceptionally malicious and cruel attacks Public Security Bureau officers perpetrated against China’s dogs and their helpless guardians would be inexcusable under any circumstances.
Some medical and legal authorities blame the Chinese Government for not taking enough preventive measures against rabies. Dr. Francette Dusan, an expert from The World Health Organization (WHO) who specializes in diseases people can contract from animals, criticized China’s rabies control methods, most of which she said “(consist) of purely reactive dog culls.” An editorial in Legal Daily, the newspaper of the central government’s Politics and Law Committee, put it more bluntly: “Wiping out the dogs shows these government officials didn’t do their jobs right in protecting people from rabies in the first place.”
Just days after this atrocity, officials in the city of Jining announced plans to destroy all dogs within a three mile radius where rabies had been found. The city, which is home to approximately 500,000 dogs, has reported 16 human rabies deaths in the past eight months.
Rabies is on the rise throughout China, with 2,375 deaths attributed to the disease reported last year out of a population of approximately 1.2 billion. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China has one of the highest rabies infection rates in the world, second only to India. There are hundreds of millions of canine companions across China, yet only about 3% have received rabies vaccinations.
China’s History of Canine Cruelty
While 2006 is the Year of the Dog – a favorable zodiac sign in Chinese astrology – “man’s best friend” is all too often exploited and abused in this country, one of the few left in the world with no animal welfare laws. Throughout most of China’s history, dogs have been used only as working animals (for hunting or guarding homes and livestock) and for food or fabric (humans still eat their flesh and harvest their fur for clothing). Under Communist doctrine, animal companions were reviled as representations of bourgeois excess. Only in the past two decades or so, since the introduction of neo-capitalist reforms, has the Chinese populace embraced dogs as companion animals.
Even as many Chinese people are learning to appreciate how loyal, affectionate and intelligent dogs are, the attitude of their government toward canines remains generally cold and heartless. For example, in June 2005, the City of Beijing, home to 400,000 canines, legally outlawed all dogs over 35cm (13.7 inches) tall. After the law went into effect, police were officially authorized to enter guardians’ homes and confiscate their beloved companions, despite the fact that dog guardians pay hefty “pet” registration fees to the municipal government every year. The law even allowed officers to indiscriminately beat dogs in front of their guardians without restraint before impounding them.
Millions of dogs (along with cats and other animals) are also killed in China every year for their fur, which is exported to countries around the world. While the sale of dog and cat fur is illegal in the U.S., consumers may not know that they are buying it because dog and cat fur is typically unlabeled or deliberately mislabeled. A controversial undercover video investigation of the Chinese fur industry revealed dogs and cats packed into wire cages and stacked by the thousands onto trucks. Additional video footage shows dogs and cats being strangled and electrocuted to death. Investigators witnessed and have documented animals being skinned alive and thrown onto piles of other skinned animals, some continuing to live for up to 10 minutes afterwards.
Mass dog culls and other savage horrors will continue to take place in China until authorities recognize and respect the shifting cultural attitude towards canines as companions and initiate humane policies reflecting these changes. The Chinese government can start by making rabies prevention through vaccination programs and public education a higher priority.
What You Can Do:
Write, call or fax the Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. urging him to push his government to end dog culls and to initiate effective preventive measures against the spread of rabies based on vaccination and public education.
His Excellency Zhou Wenzhong
Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China
Embassy of the People’s Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave. N.W.
Washington, DC 20008
Tel: (202) 328-2574
Fax: (202) 328-2582