Local policemen captured a family’s dog and beat it to death while its owners watched and recorded the incident in central China’s Hubei province on April 2.
Footage shows the final moments of a police officer beating a German Shepherd to death with a truncheon, while the owners could only watch helplessly.
The police’s actions has sparked outrage in China, and prompted complaints to local authorities—which have thus far gone unanswered.
“They beat my 1-year-old dog, Kevin, to death,” the owner says in a video that was posted to Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, and later deleted.
The police were ordered to kill many other dogs in preparation for the Military World Games which will take place in Wuhan, the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times reported on April 3.
The police organized groups to kill any dog under certain conditions. All stray dogs were ordered to be killed, and any dog taller than 18 inches. Family dogs taller than 18 inches were also ordered to be killed. However, many citizens reported that police did not follow these guidelines.
Family Dog Killed
A video of the killing was initially posted on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. The user “Animal Rights Legislation Committee, Internet Patrol Group” shared the video of two policemen killing a dog that looked similar to a German Shepherd. One officer held the dog’s neck down with a metal pole, while the other repeatedly hit the dog’s head with a truncheon.The footage records the last few blows to the dog’s head, before its body is loaded into the back of a police van. The officer striking the dog can be heard swearing at the dog as he bashes its head.
An elderly man, possibly the father of the man shooting the video, can be heard cursing the police in a local dialect.
“Kevin!” the owner shouts loudly, as the dog vanishes into the car. Only bloody spots remain on the asphalt.
“Look, everyone, this is the Hongshan County law-enforcement officer,” the man recording the video said.
Reaction
A Weibo user commented that the police came up to the family’s house to apprehend the dog, and beat it in front of the family, the report said. After the dog was nearly dead, the police dragged it out to the parking lot to kill it.The group which posted the video said the sports competition turned the city into a place of purgatory for dogs.
The dog-killing police groups have been active since March, according to the report. Stray dogs are often killed on the spot, and large dogs are generally first captured then later killed.
Citizens in Wuhan made requests to the mayor about police actions. However, their requests for transparency were ignored by city officials, the report said.
Other citizens complained online in comments to the video on Weibo, listing grievances against police in their dog extermination campaign.
These complaints include police charging owners with assaulting an officer when the owners attempted to protect their dogs, taking dogs away despite the owners having a certificate of ownership, and detaining dogs at the station and requiring a fine to be paid for the animal to be released.
According to the report, other internet users posted scathing comments of the Chinese regime’s actions. One user alluded to the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, “Inspecting house to house, making everyone nervous, what era have we regressed to?”
The Cultural Revolution was a decade-long period of political and social turmoil launched by Mao Zedong, the former leader of the Chinese Communist Party, in 1966. Red Guards, groups of militant university and high-school students guided by Mao, rampaged through much of the country, humiliating, torturing, and killing perceived class enemies, such as intellectuals and “capitalists.” Estimates indicate as many as 2 million people died during this period.
Another commenter directly cursed the local government. “You’ve filled the people with seething discontent by organizing a military competition, so let me ask how stupid are the political leaders in Wuhan?”
