[ad_1]
China’s state broadcaster CCTV called for legislation against animal abuse after news of a Chinese security guard pouring boiling water on a pregnant cat went viral on social media.
“It is the consensus of the whole of society to say no to cruelty to animals, but incidents of cruelty and killing of animals still occur from time to time,” the broadcaster said in an article published on its Weibo account similar to Twitter on Thursday.
“Faced with such serious acts of committing and spreading violence, we should no longer remain at the level of moral condemnation,” he said.
Get the latest insights and analysis from our global impact newsletter on the great stories originating from China.
The article explained that those who were cruel to animals could not be expected to treat people well. He called for legal action on the matter, saying that during the Two Sessions, China’s annual meeting of the country’s legislature, this year, several lawmakers suggested that people who committed public violence against animals be punished.
“With the laws, we protect not only the animals, but also ourselves,” he said.
A hashtag accompanying the Weibo post reporting cruelty to cats was read more than 560 million times on Friday morning.
On Monday, a video reporting that a man in Taiyuan, central China’s Shanxi Province, locked a white cat in a cage and poured boiling water on it, went viral on social media. A bystander stopped the man and helped carry the cat to a pet hospital, CCTV reported.
The man said he wanted revenge because the stray cat stole the sausage. He was detained by the local police.
The next day, the man’s employer, Taiyuan Security Services, released a statement saying that it had fired the man and paid 5,000 yuan (US $ 750) to the Taiyuan animal protection group for the cat’s treatment.
However, the cat and her four unborn kittens died from their injuries, CCTV reported.
China has no laws on animal cruelty. Since the coronavirus outbreak, several cities, led by Shenzhen, have banned the eating of cats and dogs. While animal rights activists have applauded the ban, the laws were passed with the goal of safeguarding public health and safety rather than the protection of animals.
In the past, Chinese netizens have taken it into their own hands to expose acts of animal abuse and have helped the incidents go viral online.
One of the most popular animal abuse cases on social media occurred in 2017, when a woman, He Hengli, abducted a corgi named Lion and blackmailed the owner into releasing him.
After negotiations came to a standstill, the landlord went with the police to He’s apartment on a rescue mission only to find that he had thrown Lion to death from his sixth floor apartment.
But police said they couldn’t hold He responsible under existing laws, and enraged netizens took matters into their own hands by exposing He’s personal information online, sending funeral products to his home and threatening messages at work. And at home.
This Article China’s state media demands that animal abuse be illegal after unborn cats and kittens killed by boiling water first appeared in the South China Morning Post.
For the latest news from the South China Morning Post, download our mobile app. Copyright 2020.
