(Photo by Dimitar Dilkof/AFP) |
Claims that
about 100 stray dogs were buried alive in northern China are being
investigated, an official said Sunday, the latest apparent case of animal
cruelty to shock the nation.
Allegations
that a pit pictured online Wednesday containing scores of stray dogs had been
filled in by local government officials were made by a charity based in Inner
Mongolia.
The
Yinchuan Dawn Pets Home group investigated after a woman searching for her pet
dog near a garbage dump in Alxa League, near China's border with Mongolia, told
them that the animals were trapped on Wednesday.
When the
charity visited the site the following day, they found that the pit had been
filled in.
A charity
volunteer told AFP that another visit was made on Friday, but by then it
appeared that the dead dogs had been moved elsewhere, in what the group said
was an attempt by local officials responsible for enforcing city laws -- called
Chengguan in China -- to hide the grim burial.
"We
hired an excavator and found in the place where the dogs were buried six dead
dogs which were damaged by an excavator before we got there," the
volunteer surnamed Fan told AFP.
"These
dogs all had soil in their mouths and noses, which means before we arrived at
the scene local Chengguan had already transferred the dogs' bodies to another
secret place."
An official
from the local Chengguan office denied the allegations and said an
investigation had been launched.
"We
are investigating if some stray dogs were buried alive," the official told
AFP.
"I can
ensure you we didn't do this kind of thing, and moreover, we are not in charge
of stray dogs."
Internet
outrage
Pictures of
the dogs before the alleged burial were posted by the charity on Sina Weibo --
China's version of Twitter.
The images
showed scores of animals in a dusty ditch about six feet (1.8 metres) deep. The
original post was followed by subsequent updates detailing the burial claims.
The
allegations against the Chengguan -- who have a reputation for brutality in
China -- sparked a wave of fury, with some online comments being forwarded tens
of thousands of times.
"(We)
should put these officials into a pit, no better than a group of beasts,"
one netizen said in a Weibo post Sunday.
Pet
ownership has ballooned across China, with more than 30 million households now
keeping a cat or dog, according to research group Euromonitor.
China --
which has no laws against animal cruelty -- has also witnessed an increase in
animal rights campaigning in recent years.
In May
2013, dozens of stray cats were slaughtered in a residential district in
Beijing, with their fur almost completely plucked out, state news agency Xinhua
reported.
Animal
rights campaigners in Shanghai highlighted the case of a woman who was alleged
to have killed hundreds of cats, the Global Times newspaper reported in 2012.
Official
policy in many Chinese cities is that stray dogs are rounded up and found new
homes, but activists say they are usually put down or sometimes sold on to
restaurants for their meat.
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