Help Stop the Slaughter of 15,000 Dogs for Solstice Celebrations in Yulin, China

Warning: Some of the external links include images that many people may find upsetting.

The Scottish poet Robert Burns, who was passionate about freedom and respect for humankind, wrote, “Man’s Inhumanity to Man, makes countless thousands mourn”

Equally man’s inhumanity to the other animals with whom we share this world makes countless thousands mourn. Moreover the horrendous barbarity and abuse towards our fellow creatures never ceases to shock me and no doubt thousands of others as the internet exposes atrocities so appalling that our minds sometimes fail to believe what we are reading or seeing.

Did you know that in a town called Yulin in China, 10,000 to 15000 dogs are slaughtered every June as part of a summer solstice “festival?”

That’s right 15,000 dogs are slaughtered to celebrate the summer Solstice each year in this Chinese city. Residents of Yulin in Guangxi province consider the festival an ancient summer solstice tradition. What this hideous cruelty has to do with the celebration of the summer solstice I cannot imagine.

If you do not have the time to read any further at least please sign these petitions:

Stop the Yulin dog slaughter
http://www.care2.com/go/z/20939876

Stop Killing Dogs for Annual Yulin Dog-Eating Festival!!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/805/082/951/stop-killing-dogs-for-annual-yulin-dog-eating-festival/

Petition the Chinese government to stop the Yulin dog eating festival and pass animal welfare laws:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Petition_the_Chinese_government_to_stop_the_Yulin_dog_eating_festival_and_pass_animal_welfare_laws/?pv=27

Here are the shocking facts, which make painful reading. How the hell anyone attending this public display of barbarity endures the horror is beyond my comprehension, as it is beyond my ability to understand the kind of mentality that motivates people to commit such cruelty to thinking feeling intelligent beings.

The dogs, who are mostly stolen well cared for family pets, face extreme cruelty as they are taken to slaughter. Before these unfortunate creatures are denied their lives for the sake of tradition, and frankly the indulgence in sickening sadism, they are transported in cramped and filthy conditions and tortured before being killed and eaten by the people of Yulin. The dogs, who are killed in front of other dogs, are electrocuted, burned, skinned and boiled alive or hung upside down and beaten then left to bleed out slowly. This appalling cruelty is done to raise the levels of adrenaline in their bodies, which a good majority of uninformed Chinese consider aids male virility and good health when the meat is eaten.

Thankfully Chinese activists are starting to take a stand and demanding change from their own government, fighting for animal rights at great personal and financial expense.

Photo – Chinese volunteers rescue dogs destined for dog-meat restaurants. 

“Activists have tried to block the event on numerous occasions through open letters and street protests. Some have implored the UK and US governments to interfere with the festival via online petitions. “Please help us stop the Yulin Festival of eating dogs in Guangxi province. It is bloody and disregards life,” a petition on the US White House website was titled.

“They use knives to kill the dogs which are alive,” it said, according to the South China Morning Post. “Then people would like to burn the dogs, which are conscious, so they can eat them.” The petition was recently taken down because it failed to meet the 100,000 signature threshold required to elicit a response from the Obama administration.”

Read More
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/18/chinese-city-yulin-dog-meat-festival

Animal rights activists in China need our support

Extreme cruelty towards animals, such as the above “festival”, is commonplace throughout Asia. The Yulin massacre is but one of the many atrocities that are committed against animals in China day in and day out. In China and other Asian countries dogs are regularly killed in this manner and eaten throughout the year. Bears are kept in cramped cages so that their bile can be extracted from an infected opening cut into their stomachs. As many as 10,000 bears are kept for their whole lives in these cages:  as much as thirty years in a space so small they cannot even turn round. Turtles and other small animals are sealed into little bags and sold as living keychains. Domestic pets and livestock are kept in appalling conditions at markets. Live chickens, turtles, quails and other birds and animals are shoved into net bags and left in the sun on the sidewalk without food and water until they are sold. Cats are boiled alive and eaten. In China animals including cats and dogs are skinned alive for the fur trade 

There are a growing number of animal rights activists in China and they need our support.

Here’s how we can help stop the cruel festival this year. Be encouraged by the fact that online activism successfully stopped the dog meat festival of 2011, but it resumed again in 2012 and 2013.

Please help by signing the following three petitions if you have not already done so, one targeting the government of China and the others targeting city officials of Yulin, Shaanxi. Please go to the links and add your signature to all of them. Lets get this festival banned, if enough of us speak out there is a chance that this year we can get this Festival stopped.

The Chinese government must make animal abuse a criminal offence.

Stop the Yulin dog slaughter
http://www.care2.com/go/z/20939876

Stop Killing Dogs for Annual Yulin Dog-Eating Festival!!
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/805/082/951/stop-killing-dogs-for-annual-yulin-dog-eating-festival/

Petition the Chinese government to stop the Yulin dog eating festival and pass animal welfare laws:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Petition_the_Chinese_government_to_stop_the_Yulin_dog_eating_festival_and_pass_animal_welfare_laws/?pv=27

Make your voice heard and don’t stop until China passes animal welfare laws!

Please note: While the introduction of animal welfare laws in China are needed urgently, the ideal situation is of course to stop rearing, raising and killing animals for food or exploiting them in any way. As an abolitionist and animal rights supporter I would like to see a cessation of all animal exploitation. While the eating of dogs and cats – most particularly of course the skinning and boiling alive of these animals –  is shocking in the extreme, cruelty is cruelty whether it is a dog or a cow, a cat or a sheep. All animals have the right to life, free from exploitation and cruelty regardless of species or the degree of abuse. Our appalling treatment of animals has to stop world-wide, whether they are animals reared for meat in factory farms here in the UK or pets snatched from their owners in China. Whether they are animals tortured in laboratories in the UK or tortured in a barbaric festival in far away Asia, we need to stand against the abuse of living thinking, feeling, sentient beings wherever they may be. If we are ever to have a moral and ethical society we must learn to respect the rights of all the creatures with whom we share this world.

Mahatma Gandhi once said: “You can judge the morality of a nation by the way the society treats its animals”.

What does the atrocity at Yulin and the other abuses listed above say about China? What does our treatment of animals in factory farms and in laboratories say about the UK, indeed in any western country, such as the USA’s continued cruel experiments on chimpanzees, when animals face painful and horrific experiments. What does it say about human beings as a species when 600,000 mice worldwide die a horrific death as each batch of Botox is tested by injection into the abdomen of these tiny defenceless rodents who suffer paralysis, impaired vision and respiratory distress, dying of suffocation after three days. For what? For the sake of the fickle minded vanity of the wealthy. What does it say about us as a species when we allow calves to be torn from their mothers and locked in containers to provide the rich with a delicacy while millions starve to death – an atrocity to both cattle and other humans.

Well I could go on the list is long and added to daily as we mistreat the other creatures with whom we share this world including our own species.

An old man walking on the beach at dawn noticed a boy picking up a starfish and throwing it into the sea. When asked why, the boy explained that the stranded starfish would die if left to lie in the morning sun. ‘But there are millions of starfish on this beach,’ said the old man. ‘How can your efforts make a difference? ’The boy picked up another starfish and placed it in the waves. ‘It makes a difference to this one,’ he said.

Be a part of the change take action today and make a difference!

Please sign the above petitions if you have not already done so. There are other actions included in the links above concerning the issues discussed. Every action taken goes towards making a better world for both human and nonhuman animals.

I would like to hope that the following is true:

Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come.

Albert Schweitzer

Links and more petitions

http://www.animal-rights-action.com/dog-meat.html – more information and ways to help bring an end to the cat and dog meat trade

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/National_Peoples_Congress_Legislate_Small_Animals_Protection_Law/?fbss

http://www.earth-heal.com/news/news/45-take-action/1513-stop-the-dog-slaughter-yulin.html