玉林狗肉节遭动物保护组织指责
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.
据英国《卫报》6月19日报道，中国南方小城市计划举办一年一度的狗肉节，此举招致动物权利保护组织的强烈批评，指责这项为期一天的活动危险而残忍。
狗肉节是广西省玉林市夏至日的传统。很多居民珍视他们的狗肉节文化，并在这一天食用大量的狗肉火锅，佐以荔枝核和陈酒。
动物权利保护组织声称，每年的这个节日里要屠杀一万只狗，其中很多是电击、火烧和活剥。网上照片曝光了被剥皮的狗，挂钩上的狗肉和路边堆积的尸体。在中国，狗肉认为是冬季的营养菜，医生会推荐狗肉来治疗类似阳痿和血气不通的疾病。
动物权利活动分子试图在多个场合通过公开信和上街抗议的方式来阻止这次活动，有的甚至通过网上请愿的方式来恳求英美政府干涉这次狗肉节。“请帮助我们阻止广西玉林的狗肉节，它血腥而漠视生命”，美国白宫网站上的请愿标题如此写道。
据《南华早报》（South China Morning Post）报道，“他们用刀杀死活狗，”请愿书写道。“然后，人们将尚有意识的狗在火火上灼烧，以便食用”。最近，由于没有达到要求奥巴马政府回复的10万个签名，这封白宫请愿信被撤掉。
香港非政府组织（NGO）亚洲动物基金（Animal Asia）发布了一封公开信，狗肉节中食用的大量狗肉来自流浪狗和拐卖而来的狗。有一些是用肮脏和过载的卡车运送到玉林，而这个过程大大地增加了狗感染狂犬病或其他传染性疾病的可能。玉林地方官方称这些狗是由当地农民饲养的。
“偷来的狗没有检疫证明的，遭到残忍地屠杀，并以极低的价格贩卖给餐馆，”河北佛教慈善基金会（Hebei Buddhism Charity Foundation）的主管助理慧慈大师（Huici）告诉《环球时报》说道。
周二下午在下班时间，玉林市官员没有接听采访电话。
五月，中国边境工作人员查获了213只熊掌——一种非常昂贵的中药材，逮捕了试图通过车轮胎走私熊掌的两名俄国人。
