SHANGHAI, China – A county in southwestern China has killed as many as 50,000 dogs in a government campaign ordered after three people died from rabies, official media reported today.
The five-day massacre in Yunnan province’s Mouding county spared only military guard dogs and police canine units, the Shanghai Daily reported, citing local media.
Dogs being walked were taken from their owners and beaten on the spot, the newspaper said. Other killing teams entered villages at night, creating noise to get dogs barking, then honing in and beating them to death.
Well appears to me that the folks over there need some backbone installed. I can’t see that happening in most Western countries. Folks get awful violent when it comes to things like that. And most won’t even use a gun. A shovel will work just as good and have dual purpose.
This was a message not to dog owners only but, to all the people.
They could have been less brutal but, they chose not to. Bullets are quicker and more efficient, less bloody, less shocking, less brutal. The choice was made to do this extermination in a frightening brutal method.
This was a message of intimidation from their leaders, pure and simple.
I control you, don’t F*** with me or it will be you next.
It has nothing to do with decadence. Pure threat and intimidation.
I think perhaps a couple of things have been missed. First, their infrastructure isn’t capable of dealing with a massive rabies epidemic. Having animals innoculated for various diseases (including rabies) is probably close to zero except perhaps in the largest cities. It is likely that something close to 99% of all dogs are potential carriers of the disease.
Humane killing? The only people with bullets are the police or military, and there wouldn’t be enough of them available quickly to do the job.
It’s easy to look at this issue from our perspective, where pet care is widely available, or where most households have access to bullets. Quite different to see the problem from their perspective.
Rather than being inhumane, they are simply doing what is pragmatically necessary given their circumstances.
There are other options on the way to kill. Lets say the dogs need to die. OK. Why grab them from owners and club the dog to death in front of everyone? Rather bloody and cruel don’t you think? Why come in at night to to kill the dogs? No, there are other ways to have done the killings if it was needed. sure they offered the owners 63 cents to kill their own dog before gov’t did it. So many owners obviously said no. question: When so many people turned the gov’t down did the Gov’t change its tactics?
It’s like all public safety issues. Everyone is the exception. Public resistance to any rule is a given in any society. The exact “methods” are culturally determined, and while the Chinese ways of handling things may seem overly harsh in the western world, it may make perfect sense in their culture. We prolly shouldn’t be too judgemental, since we don’t live there.
that belt is on the second I sit, by habit actually I don’t even think about it it just goes on.
Ok Tent you are right ,grabbing a dog from its loving owner and beating it to death right there on the street in front of everyone could be acceptable. I am sure the owner accepted it and felt real good about their dog 's blood spraying all over and it’s screams of pain as they beat it to death. The person could have been entirely grateful and not the least bit scared watching this whole thing happen, Along with the other people on the street. You could be right it could be a normal acceptable thing.
Offered money? Think about how many people own dogs. Let’s say that 1 in 100 people owns 1 dog in China. Since this is more of a localized problem, that estimate may not be too unreasonable.
I sure would not have killed the dogs like they did beating them to death infront of people. Take the dogs Ok , kill the dogs by beating Ok. but, not in front of the family or other citizens or at night. Lets see here, you grab the family dog in the middle of the night while the family is asleep,family includes a child possibly. Then you begin to beat the dog to death, it screams and blood is pouring out of it. Oh and here comes the family to be grateful for such a violent act upon them, the kid is of course applauding and enjoying the sight, not the least bit scared or traumatized.
This could be acceptable behavior.
Oh come on! This was a message to the people, meant to scare and intimidate. This could have been handled with a whole lot less trauma. The gov’t wanted the people to see what was being done. they wanted to intimidate and scare.
The Gov’t leaders are not that incompetent nor is the Gov’t that poor.
it could have afforded 20 or so trucks to round the dogs up and carry them off or even just chain them together and walk them away. Holy crap! guys there are multiple ways to do it with less trauma.
Alright, it is a brutal message. That sort of brutality will not just remain aimed at the dogs you do realize this right? It will be next aimed at those that go out and get another dog. And there will be those that do so. If a Gov’t condones such brutal behavior as a message towards its own citizens then it will rarely hesitate to commit acts of brutality against the citizen themselves as a further message. This is acceptable? We are not to think this as bad behavior?
Also.
Dogs there are kept not just as pets but, as food sources primarily along with cats. Lets not forget that. So if a dog/s was being kept so that it could provide much needed food for a poor family, where or what is the message then?
Dammit, this is all being judged from our standards, not theirs. I’m not suggesting that the methods aren’t brutal, but brutality is dependent on perspective, and to apply our concepts to another culture is askance at best. Kris, I agree with your sentiment, but unless you are on the ground in the culture, it is useless to attempt to define their methods as brutal. Again, their infrasructure simply doesn’t measure up to ours, and simply can’t be measured by our standards. You are giving their govenmental structure far more capability than it has. Trucks to haul off 50,000 dogs? We couldn’t even do that in your neck of the woods after Katrina. The mightiest nation in the world couldn’t even care for human beings, let alone animals.
Tentative - I have been poking around, to little success. I have trying to ascertain how the Chinese view this - whether they think it’s brutal. How do you know they don’t? That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m just wondering how you know this. I have been trying to find out.
Anyway, it’s our own perspective we should be using when making judgements. No one else’s matters. Don’t force me to use a Hitler analogy!. I promised someone, somewhere, that I would never do that again.
If it is true that they had no other means, then I agree that it may be brutal, but, well, necessary. But what I have found is a lot of criticism, both within Chinese media and from actual Chinese government entities and other Chinese agencies that suggests that there were other means available - that they may not have the technology to slaughter those cute, adorable, loyal, trusting, vulnerable little doggies better, but do have the tech to have avoided the whole scenario.
Okay. I might have cleaned up the doggy adjectives a little.
The post regarding the fact the Chinese view owning pets as decandent is accurate, but your post regarding the intimidation and brutality are also correct.
