玉林狗肉節遭動物保護組織指責
Chinese city dogged by criticism over dog-meat festival
Residents of a small city in southern China plan to hold an annual dog-meat festival on Friday amid intense criticism from animal rights groups, which have denounced the one-day event as unsafe and inhumane.
Residents of Yulin in Guangxi province consider the festival an ancient summer solstice tradition. Many cherish their city's dog-meat culture, which involves the mass consumption of dog-meat hotpot served with lychees and strong grain liquor.
Animal rights groups say 10,000 dogs are slaughtered during the festival each year, and that many are electrocuted, burned and skinned alive. Pictures posted online show flayed dogs, dogs hanging from meat hooks, and piles of dog corpses on the side of the road. In China dog meat isprized as a nutritious wintertime dish that doctors can prescribe to treat maladies such as impotence and poor circulation.
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.
According to an open letter by the Hong Kong-based NGO Animals Asia, many of the dogs consumed during the festival are strays and abductees. Some are transported to the city on filthy, overcrowded trucks, significantly increasing the risk that they carry rabies and other contagious diseases. Yulin officials claim that the dogs are raised by local farmers.
"Stolen dogs without quarantine certificates are cruelly slaughtered and sold to restaurants at very low prices," Master Huici, assistant director of the Hebei Buddhism Charity Foundation, told the state-run Global Times newspaper.
Yulin officials did not pick up the phone on Tuesday afternoon, outside of working hours.
Last month Chinese border officials seized 213 bear paws – an expensive ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine – and arrested two Russian citizens for trying to smuggle them into the country in vehicle tyres.
據英國《衛報》6月19日報道，中國南方小城市計劃舉辦一年一度的狗肉節，此舉招致動物權利保護組織的強烈批評，指責這項爲期一天的活動危險而殘忍。
狗肉節是廣西省玉林市夏至日的傳統。很多居民珍視他們的狗肉節文化，並在這一天食用大量的狗肉火鍋，佐以荔枝核和陳酒。
動物權利保護組織聲稱，每年的這個節日裏要屠殺一萬隻狗，其中很多是電擊、火燒和活剝。網上照片曝光了被剝皮的狗，掛鉤上的狗肉和路邊堆積的屍體。在中國，狗肉認爲是冬季的營養菜，醫生會推薦狗肉來治療類似陽痿和血氣不通的疾病。
動物權利活動分子試圖在多個場合通過公開信和上街抗議的方式來阻止這次活動，有的甚至通過網上請願的方式來懇求英美政府幹涉這次狗肉節。“請幫助我們阻止廣西玉林的狗肉節，它血腥而漠視生命”，美國白宮網站上的請願標題如此寫道。
據《南華早報》（South China Morning Post）報道，“他們用刀殺死活狗，”請願書寫道。“然後，人們將尚有意識的狗在火火上灼燒，以便食用”。最近，由於沒有達到要求奧巴馬政府回覆的10萬個簽名，這封白宮請願信被撤掉。
香港非政府組織（NGO）亞洲動物基金（Animal Asia）發佈了一封公開信，狗肉節中食用的大量狗肉來自流浪狗和拐賣而來的狗。有一些是用骯髒和過載的卡車運送到玉林，而這個過程大大地增加了狗感染狂犬病或其他傳染性疾病的可能。玉林地方官方稱這些狗是由當地農民飼養的。
“偷來的狗沒有檢疫證明的，遭到殘忍地屠殺，並以極低的價格販賣給餐館，”河北佛教慈善基金會（Hebei Buddhism Charity Foundation）的主管助理慧慈大師（Huici）告訴《環球時報》說道。
週二下午在下班時間，玉林市官員沒有接聽採訪電話。
五月，中國邊境工作人員查獲了213只熊掌——一種非常昂貴的中藥材，逮捕了試圖通過車輪胎走私熊掌的兩名俄國人。
