Guest guest Posted November 11, 2006 Report Share Posted November 11, 2006 Beijing protesters defy pooch purge By Chris Buckley Sat Nov 11, 2006 BEIJING (Reuters) - At least 200 protesters lined a chilly Beijing street on Saturday to denounce a government crackdown on pet dogs that has the city's usually passive citizens crying murder. " Arbitrary slaughter is disgraceful, " read one sign held up by the demonstrators who gathered in front of the city zoo. " Legislate to protect our pets, " they yelled. The protesters, many holding up toy fluffy dogs, were decrying government moves to restrict the number of pooches by enforcing a 35-centimeter height limit on dogs and confiscating and culling oversized ones, said one of the organizers, who asked to be known only by her surname, Wu. For her and others the struggle against the pooch purge has become a struggle in miniature against arbitrary power and Chinese people's powerlessness before faceless officialdom. " Raising a dog is a right, not a privilege, " said Wu, who furtively keeps five dogs and runs a pet store. " But now our rights are under attack and we can only take out our dogs in the dead of night. " She said 18 protesters were detained and released only after organizers agreed to disperse the rally. Protests are rare in the national capital, and Wu said the organizers did not obtain official approval. Beijing authorities have been vigilant against any assemblies since 1989 when pro-democracy demonstrations ended in a bloody army crackdown. A few years ago, officials relaxed rules on dog ownership but demanded that each household keep at most one dog and pay 500 yuan ($62.5) a year for the privilege, after an initial fee of 1,000 yuan ($120). Dog numbers in Beijing have nonetheless been soaring, along with cases of bites and rabies. The concrete-dominated capital now has about 550,000 licensed dogs, a rise of one fifth on last year, and many others remained uncounted, according to official estimates. In the first nine months of 2006, over 100,000 people in Beijing were bitten and nine were diagnosed with rabies, the official Xinhua news agency reported. But on Saturday middle-aged women joined twenty-somethings with pierced lips and dyed hair for the protest. Dozens of police, some in anti-riot gear, stood guard. " This dog is your friend, " read a sign held up by one protester in wrap-around sunglasses. " He fights for freedom. " -Photo: A protester holds up posters of dogs during a rally against the new " one-dog policy " in Beijing November 11, 2006. China's capital is to implement a " one dog " policy for each household in its latest bid to fight rabies which claimed 318 lives nationwide in September, Xinhua News reported. REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV http://today.reuters.com/news/newsPhotoPresentation.aspx?type=worldNews & imageID=\ 2006-11-11T092451Z_01_PEK157833_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE1.xml -Photo: Protesters stage a rally against the new " one-dog policy " in Beijing November 11, 2006. REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV http://today.reuters.com/news/newsPhotoPresentation.aspx?type=worldNews & imageID=\ 2006-11-11T092451Z_01_PEK157833_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE0.xml -Photo: Protesters stage a rally against the new " one-dog policy " in Beijing November 11, 2006. REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV (Additional reporting by Claro Cortes) http://today.reuters.com/news/newsPhotoPresentation.aspx?type=worldNews & imageID=\ 2006-11-11T092451Z_01_PEK157833_RTRUKOP_0_PICTURE2.xml ......................... Beijing Crackdown on Dogs Sparks Protest By CHARLES HUTZLER The Associated Press November 11, 2006 BEIJING -- Demonstrators angry at a crackdown on dogs staged a noisy protest in China's capital on Saturday, decrying police killings of dogs and new limits on pet ownership. About 200 police strung up tape to cordon off the roughly 500 demonstrators who waved signs and chanted near the entrance to the Beijing Zoo. Many clutched stuffed animals and wore buttons that said " Stop the indiscriminate killing. " Demonstrators, angry over a crackdown on dogs, hold banners demanding a stop to mass killings to control pet populations as they stage a protest in China's capital Beijing, Saturday Nov. 11, 2006. About 200 police kept watch and strung up tape to cordon off the roughly 500 demonstrators, as they held up stuffed animals, waved signs and chanted " Down with Dog-raising Restrictions " near the entrance to the Beijing Zoo. Many wore buttons that said " Respect Life, Oppose Indiscriminate Killing. " Police detained at least 18 demonstrators in nearby vans for several hours before releasing them, protesters said. Police declined comment. Touching off the demonstration were new restrictions that limit households to one dog and ban larger breeds. Police in recent days have gone through city neighborhoods, seizing unregistered dogs and beating some of them to death, witnesses said. " All of us who have dogs to walk are feeling very anxious, " said Wu Jiang, a protester and pet shop owner who has a yellow Labrador retriever. " Most of us only dare come out at night and even then we have to be really careful. " Keeping pets has been controversial in China for decades. Banned as a middle-class habit during the radical Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, dog-raising surged anew with the introduction of free-market reforms. Complaints about vicious dogs, barking and excrement-covered sidewalks prompted Beijing to impose height limits in 1995, banning dogs taller than 14 inches from the city center. Many cities have enacted similar measures. A sharp rise in rabies cases this year led to a renewed clampdown across China. State-run newspapers reported Saturday that 326 people died from rabies in October, again making it the leading cause of death among infectious diseases. To enforce the crackdown, police in many parts of the country have beaten stray or unregistered dogs to death, sometimes in front of their owners. Beijing responded by raising fines for having unregistered and unvaccinated dogs, adopting the new one-dog-per-family rule and extending the ban on larger dogs from the city center to encompass the surrounding suburbs. " We're asking city residents to go along with us and if they discover any unregistered or stray dogs to report to us by phone, " the Beijing News quoted the city's vice director of agriculture, Ren Zonggang, as saying in comments on the government's Web site. In some cases, protesters said, dog-owners have been given as little as one week's notice to get rid of their large dogs or move to outlying districts. Protesters said the measures are not only inhumane but wrongly place the burden of punishment on the dogs, not the owners. " The main point here should be the way dog owners raise their dogs, " said Jeff He of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Beijing, who watched the protest from beyond the cordon of yellow and black police tape. Organizers of the protest said they had applied for a permit but had been refused. Though the demonstration was largely peaceful, anti-riot squads in helmets and dark uniforms were dispatched, plainclothes police milled through the crowds and large numbers of uniformed police sat in trucks down the street. Police tried to prevent reporters from taking pictures and warned protesters that they could suffer serious consequences for their actions. " It was like martial law out there, " said Wu Jiang, the pet shop owner. " We said to them " We're taxpayers. Why are you treating us this way? " Police used loudspeakers on a nearby van to urge protesters to take their complaints to a special desk set up inside the zoo. Nine representatives of the protesters were taken inside the zoo to discuss the protest with police, protesters said. Photo: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2006/11/11/PH2006111100391.ht\ ml http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111100388.\ html ......................... Beijing dog policy sparks protest BBC 11 November 2006 At least 200 people have protested in the Chinese capital, Beijing, against restrictions on pet dog ownership. Demonstrators holding stuffed toy animals said new rules limiting families in the capital to owning one small dog each were inhumane. They said a ban on larger breeds would lead to dogs being confiscated and culled. In August, a mass cull of dogs caused uproar in south-west China. The 'one dog' policy was announced as part of a campaign to combat rabies. The protest was watched by many police, who demonstrators say detained 18 people. One protester said the rule that pet dogs could be no taller than 35 cm was nonsense. " We hope the world will support us in stopping the meaningless hurting and killing of dogs, " she said, adding, " the height of a dog doesn't make them guilty or fierce! " Rising wages have led to a boom in dog ownership, but high fees have meant most dogs are unregistered and unvaccinated. Photo: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/42303000/jpg/_42303568_ap_protest_203credi\ t.jpg http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6139046.stm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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