Jakarta Globe, Agence France-Presse, May 7, 2013
Beijing. A
Chinese tiger park has sought to quell public anger after images of
holiday-makers sitting astride a strapped–down cub prompted outrage online,
state media said Tuesday.
Pictures
taken at a Siberian tiger park in northwest China’s Jilin province showed
visitors posing for photos while sitting on top of a tiger cub tied to a wooden
table, the state-run Global Times reported.
Video
footage has also emerged from another animal park in Zhejiang province in the
east, showing a tiger strapped to a bench while a man sat on top of it,
bouncing up and down and slapping the tiger’s head.
The
incidents provoked outrage on China’s popular social networking site Sina
Weibo. “Humans gradually evolve into beasts,” one user said, while another
added: “Humans have reached a new level of insanity.”
Authorities
at the Jilin park said the abused cub was not among the animals it cares for,
according to the Global Times, insisting that it belonged instead to an animal
troupe that the park hired to stage performances for visitors.
The park
said it had terminated its contract with the troupe and penalized its director
5,000 yuan ($800) over the incident, the report said.
China says
it has thousands of tigers in captivity, and its cold northeast is home to the
rare Siberian tiger, of which only 450 remain in the wild, according to the
WWF.
The WWF
warned in 2010 that the tiger faced extinction in the wild in China after
having been devastated by poaching and the destruction of its natural habitat.
China has
no laws specifically against cruelty to animals and zoo visitors and staff are
sometimes able to abuse captive creatures without sanction.
Endangered
species are sometimes kept as trophy pets and the country is widely considered
a key destination for the global illegal wildlife trade.
Agence France-Presse
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