Animals Asia has received information from contacts in Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia that the Hongshan district police office has instigated a policy of indiscriminate dog slaughter. The authorities in Chifeng City issued dog-management regulations to the people of the city back in 2003.

The authorities claim that in recent years, the behaviour of dogs and their guardians has become out of control. Therefore in August 2009, the police issued an official announcement forbidding dogs and dog guardians from:

1. Raising large dogs and dangerous dogs in the downtown area of Chifeng City.

2. Entering markets, shops, restaurants, parks, public greenbelt, schools, hospitals, movie theaters, gymnasiums, pleasure grounds, bus stations, airports, streets, resident communities, and other public areas.

3. Walking dogs on the street and footpath.

4. Entering public vehicles and elevators.

If anyone gets out of line, the police will kill all such dogs….

Evidence of this slaughter has been confirmed by the online news agency sina.com at http://bbs.news.sina.com.cn/thread-9-0/tree-842212-3930.html [Please be warned this link contains disturbing images]

Animals Asia is saddened and appalled by these actions being carried out by the Chifeng authorities and the development of archaic rules to regulate dog-guardianship in the city and control street-dog populations.

Animals Asia, in partnership with Chinese animal-welfare groups as part of the “Friends of Animals Asia Alliance” has written to the Chifeng authorities calling for an immediate end to this mass slaughter, and asking the authorities to consider a “grandfather” approach allowing people to keep the dogs they have and, once they have died naturally, instructing owners not to replace them with other dogs. This will at least allow owners to keep their beloved family members. Our coalition letter is below.

To read a report on dog-population management in China and how Animals Asia strives to prevent more culls, please click here.

What you can do
You can help support our efforts to battle this atrocity. Please write a polite letter to the Chinese Ambassador and send it to the main embassy address in your country. Embassy addresses can be found here:
www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/embassy_list.htm

Explain, politely but firmly, that the policy is cruel, heartless and ineffective, and paints the people and government of Chifeng in a very poor light.

Urge the Chinese authorities to persuade the Chifeng City government to abandon this carnage in favour of a humane trap-neuter-release and vaccination programme, as recommended by the WHO, and animal-welfare organisations worldwide. Please urge the authorities in Beijing to allow dog owners to keep the dogs they already have and allow them to live out their natural lives.