Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing this email from Shanghai, China. My purpose is to ask help from Medias & animal protection organizations out of China to support our helpless animal protection volunteers in Shenyang City, LiaoNing Province.
As you might know, in China there are still some areas keep the bad habit (which they call it a tradition) to eat dogs and cats. Though nowadays there are more and more young, educated people realized it is cruel and savage and adverse to the image of an ancient civilized country, and we can hardly find dog or cat in restaurants located in Shanghai or Beijing, but in some less developed area like North East part of China and GuangDong, GuangXi , YunNan, it is still very common to eat dog, cat or wild animals.
As a Chinese, I am proud of my country; but as one of the millions of animal loves in China, I feel shameful and painful, and have to fight with this cruelty every day.
This might be unbelievable to western countries; unfortunately it is the bloody truth here.
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I am writing this email from Shanghai, China. My purpose is to ask help from Medias & animal protection organizations out of China to support our helpless animal protection volunteers in Shenyang City, LiaoNing Province.
As you might know, in China there are still some areas keep the bad habit (which they call it a tradition) to eat dogs and cats. Though nowadays there are more and more young, educated people realized it is cruel and savage and adverse to the image of an ancient civilized country, and we can hardly find dog or cat in restaurants located in Shanghai or Beijing, but in some less developed area like North East part of China and GuangDong, GuangXi , YunNan, it is still very common to eat dog, cat or wild animals.
As a Chinese, I am proud of my country; but as one of the millions of animal loves in China, I feel shameful and painful, and have to fight with this cruelty every day.
This might be unbelievable to western countries; unfortunately it is the bloody truth here.
On Mar 2nd, a volunteer in Chongqing City found a truck full of cages of dogs rushing on the highway. These dogs were on the way to Guangdong, where they will be slaughtered and put onto restaurant’s tables. The volunteer was very brave. He stopped the car and called the police. From above photo, we could see a dog has a pink collar. It must be a missed or a stolen dog. But local police ignored it and claimed that these dogs ‘looked’ very healthy and should be ‘eatable’ and insisted to release the truck.
So the volunteer called his friends and updated this news on Sina micro-blog; asking for help from volunteers all around China.
Heard the news, volunteers from Sichuan, Shanghai and Beijing rush to Chongqing to support local volunteers. Some drove 2000km from Shanghai to Chongqing, some volunteers are foreigners, and we heard that some foreign Medias tried to contact local police but the police refused to answer their phone calls.
After accounted there were more than 900 dogs, some were injured, some were seriously sick, some were poisoned, and some already dead! Those dogs were the policed called healthy and eatable dogs. And even more ridiculous thing is there was a goat found in the middle of all these dogs.
This is the goat they found on the truck.
Actually, in China only pork, beef, lamb, chicken, duck and fish… … are government approved eatable meat. There is no law said dog, cat or any wild animal are eatable, let alone to issue quarantine certificate to dog or cat sellers. But the strange thing is almost all dog/cat sellers will hold a quarantine certificate issued by local government.
Finally as more and more volunteers gathered in Chongqing and maybe because of some foreigners on site, finally local police and government agreed to handover these dogs to our volunteers. This is a victory of our brave volunteers and this is a victory to animal protection in China.
But when we still in the happiness of Chongqing’s victory, on Mar 5th, in GuiYang City (GuiZhou province), another truck full of dogs are found. The truck headed to GuangXi. As said the dog seller also held a quarantine certificate issued by his local government. This time the situation was more serious than Chongqing, the dog sellers hit our volunteers, and there were only around 10-20 volunteers on site and most of them are young girls. Yes, the dog sellers hit women!
And what did our police do? They just ignored what they see. The police even said that they don’t care what on the truck, they only admit the quarantine certificate; as long as the dog seller held the certificate, he will be released even if he transports dead human body (a volunteer use his mobile phone recorded this conversation)
This time there were around 800 dogs on the truck. As usual most are aboviously stolen from their be loved families.
Do they look like food?
And there were something even more ridiculous found in this truck! Two cats and a chicken!
To be short, though the dog seller and the police tried to stop volunteers’ rescue action, when more and more attention from society gathered on this issue and volunteers from Chongqing moved to GuiYang, finally the government give in and agreed to transfer all dogs to volunteers. This is our 2nd victory in March, 2013.
Then on March 7th, a truck of dogs was found in Liao Ning Province, heading for ShenYang city.
Just like other local police, the ShenYang police stand on the dog sellers side. There are 186 dogs on the truck, less dogs should be easy work? No. This time we are facing the most difficult situation.
ShenYang city, LiaoNing province, located in north east party of China, the local police are well known of their savage, rudeness and unreasonable. People call they ‘north east tiger’. The volunteer asked police to check the so called invested dogs and was replied, it ‘seems’ there are no dead dogs in the truck, so no need to check it.
The police even lie to volunteers. They made the volunteers believe that they will move these dogs to country side and handover to volunteers. But the fact is once they moved to a remote place; the police changed their face and separated volunteers and the dogs by force. People on site said, they even sent riot police and pointed their gun to unarmed volunteers. On Mar 8th, the police said if we want the dogs we have to buy all the dogs from dog sellers; 500RMB for each dog and totally 100k RMB. Our police station becomes a black dog market.
After the long trip, dogs were starving and thirsty to death. Volunteers climbed on the top of the truck to feed them and give them water.
Volunteers surrounded the truck to protect dogs from dog sellers and policemen.
Volunteers were dispersed by armed policemen, and one of aged volunteers got heart attack. Only volunteers on site tried to help her.
This volunteer came from TianJin. His wife is pregnant and gave him fully support. She just said, go and save these poor dogs. This volunteer was arrested by local police since Mar 7th night and still not released. His wife is so scared and anxious. As said before, the local police are very rude; we cannot imagine how he can bear the whole nights of darkness and the helplessness. We are all worried about him.
Now we just wish that Medias and Animal protection organization around world, please, please stand out and say something for us, for the dogs, for the cats for the waiting wife, for the sick old lady and for all Chinese volunteers. We need your hands, because if this time the dogs are gave back to dog sellers or slaughtered by policemen, next time when similar issue happen, all police in Chinese will handle in Shenyang Police’s way, which means all our volunteers effort will be wasted and more dogs and cats will be sent to restaurant.
P.S. on March 7th, a truck with 100 cats was stopped and all cats were rescued. We believe that with we our efforts, our persistence and help from foreign friends, we could change the situation finally, in some day, and we wish it is not very far away.
Yours Sincerely ,
Elsa XIA
March 8th 2013
+86 13818471233
yanyanxq@hotmail.com