To prepare for the Olympic Games, China has mounted an aggressive campaign to rid Beijing from ... cats!
The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.
Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.
Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females - were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.
China's leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS - a deadly respiratory virus - in 2003.
But the crackdown on cats is seen by animal campaigners as just one of a number of extreme measures being taken by communist leaders to ensure that its capital appears clean, green and welcoming during the Olympics.
The cats are then taken to what animal activists are describing as "death camps" on the edge of Beijing: Link
Comments (35)
What about the title "The Chinese Death Camp for Cats" strikes you as 'neat' ?!
Sorry, it just aggrivates me to come to a site that is supposed to be full of fun and interesting things and just run soemthing like "guess what they are killing tons of cats all the time!" >:(
I hope Beijing has an infestation of rats! Like Exodus Let My People Go style! EPIC rat takeover will be their Karma.
why is marijuana illegal?
why are hallucinogenic plants schedule I?
I'm sure nothing bad ever happens there.
(Look directly under the first photo for "Doomed: Terrified cats crammed tightly into cages are hauled off to a meat market in Guangzhou")
avraamov: this is a problem because of they're willingness to show what they are doing to these animals. what people do to animals, they most certainly will do to people. It is a sign to be taken seriously of what is to come and a sign to further investigate those things you listed. Except for exzema, headaches and split ends. If you're going to be sarcastic, make it make sense.
And I'm glad I saw this on Neatorama.
"""
SKINNER: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
LISA: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
SKINNER: No problem. We simply unleash wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
LISA: But aren't the snakes even worse?
SKINNER: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
LISA: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
SKINNER: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
"""
"Such an unbelievebly cruel country."
i agree. their overall record isn't looking good for them....
Pregnant women can get Toxoplasmosis from cat feces... however I cant figure out what other disease they are worried about. Maybe something from fleas?? It was the same way rats carried pandemics- it wasn't the rats, it was the fleas riding on their backs.
this country has a history of abuse towards animals. no surprise here. you can always judge the quality of people by the way they treat their animals. period.
As an American, I can tell you we once did things atrocious like the Tuskeegee experiments, enslavement of blacks for 300 years, and just as bad, ignored genocide in several countries.
But let's take the time to demonize China for ridding Beijing of stray cats while our soldiers in Iraq throw puppies offa cliffs. (not to mention torture Iraqis).
The U.S has mass executions too - it's called the death penalty. Occupying Tibet, like how the US occupies many territories? Supporting the Sudanese government - like how the US supported a corrupt Pakistani government, installed a corrupt Afghanistan government and Iraqi government? China didn't support North Korea in the latest conflict between N.K and The U.S. China wanted a non-nuclear arsenal in the Korean Peninsula. No free speech and no democracy - like American wire tapings, and the patriot act? How the president can veto anything he wants, even though congress, elected officials by the people voted in favor of a proposed bill? Extreme rural poverty, like New Orleans, Detroit, and the average American being 40 000 dollars in debt, and have no health care? Pollution - like how the US complains about their pollution but decides to do nothing about their own? Rising inflation - like the US is currently having rising inflation and falling house prices?
The reason why China is slowly becoming democratic is because they don't want to make the same dumb mistake Russia did - an overnight change of government. Why do you think Russia keeps talking about "the old days" being the better days? China is at a point of change, just like the West after the second world war.
Do you know why the cat problem happened? Because pets were banned for the longest time until recently. Everyone, with this new freedom, ran out and bought a pet, except they didn't know anything on how to raise or take care of their pets, and therefore got rid of them.
thank you, you are the voice of reason. I was attempting to formulate a response similar to yours.
anyway I agree with avraamov, and iI wouldn't want to live anywhere else by America... except maybe Canadia
having been to china, but not the u.s, i wouldn't necessarily be in position to reply. this all rather misses the point though doesn't it? that being stuff happens in china which is rather more pressing than cat welfare. 'the chinese are horrible to their animals' is another racist stereotype that regularly gets quoted as fact regardless of the truth or otherwise, and gets reinforced by stupid language like 'death camps' - the sort of unhelpful hyperbole regularly trotted out by the animal rights lobbies. by the way, according to the 'voice of reason', all the bad stuff perpetrated by the u.s apparently makes anything bad happening in china less bad. that's not reason, that's daft - especially since on closer examination the comparisons are mostly facile. and i stand by my comments on the cakes as well.
sorry to be so un-neat kids.
I understand where youre coming from. Ive been to China myself (soon to return permanently) on numerous occasion but never been to the US either. The point i made above was a simple reply and one which i did not have the time to expand upon, though i perhaps should have.
At the heart of it, this is just another example of a constant systematic attack on China as far as i can see - not just the above but on many issues. China is not perfect - ill concede that. However at the end of the day it is still a second-world country and should be viewed in that light. The most vocal critics of Chinese policy are the US and the UK, countries who have their own skeletons in their respective closets. If China ran Guantanamo Bay, there would be international uproar.
Its very easy to demonise a nation by running stories as the one above ("Chinese death camp for cats"). Consider too the source - the Daily Mail - that bastion of intelligent liberalism.
I quote: "Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around." This is hack journalism at its worst. The reporter has , ill wager, never set foot in Beijing. Here in the west we could describe the conditions of Battery Hens in similar conditions - i dont see an uproar about this.
I quote again:
"Doomed: Terrified cats crammed tightly into cages are hauled off to a meat market in Guangzhou"
Again, hack journalism based on a photo.
The same people who turn in disgust at this thread do not see the irony of their own situations.
And another thing - you mentioned above:
"...mass abortion of female fetuses because of the same..."
If you have been to China you will see why this is necessary (the one-child policy) and also that most people agree with it, despite what the misguided western media have to say about it (herein they have their own agendas).
In a population explosion such as this, abortion is an unwelcome but necessary evil.
The Chinese economy is booming, and is in the best condition its been since the beginning of the 20th Century. For this reason i am optimistic, coupled with the fact that the populous is enjoying this new explosion of wealth and prosperity.
The West dosent know shit about China - basically, one cant comment unless one has been there, for all else is speculation.
fear not. long posts are good because they at least get stuff aired. i'm a bit of a fan of this site because of its scattergun approach - but the natural casualty with this kind of thing is the broader context within which things happen - often clicking on the link doesn't give you that either. neatorama do seem to be daily mail fans (there was a post from the mail about muslim immigrants, 'harems' and multiple benefits payments recently which was full of the joys of spring as you'd imagine) and this exposes problems with this kind of format. who are non-u.k residents to know where the mail's coming from? this issue will only grow as print gets smaller and online gets bigger - people simply don't have the time to dig through all the crap.
good luck with the move to china...
Thanks - im due to teach in the North East later this year, personally with a view to long term as my partner is from there herself. So im looking forward to it - it should be an experience.