Recently, a live video of cat abuse was exposed. The people in the video not only live-streamed their own cat abuse throughout the process, but also opened a live broadcast tip, and the watcher can customize the way to abuse and kill kittens as long as they pay money.
The reporter's investigation found that behind the abuse of cats and dogs, there is also a black industrial chain such as video sales and live broadcast rewards. On this chain of interests, there are cat abusers who specialize in recording videos of abuse and killing, professional sellers who organize video resources to be packaged and sold, and intermediaries and sellers who specialize in expanding customers in various channels.
△ Image source / The Paper
Selling abusive cat videos for profit has spawned a black industry chain
Wang Lin (pseudonym) is the head of a group of small animal rescuers in Beijing, who has been doing animal rescue for many years, and she has seen and heard too many incredible acts of cruelty to small animals: skinning kittens, pretending to be adopters to adopt animals and then abusing them, instructing their own dogs to chase and bite stray cats...
It is worth noting that more and more people sell and disseminate videos of cruelty to small animals for profit or other purposes, forming a secret black industrial chain.
Reporters have recently searched on some shopping websites with keywords such as "abuse of cats", "abuse of dogs", "videos of animal abuse", etc., and all show "no search results". When searching for groups with the same keywords on social media, groups that do not match the filter criteria are also displayed.
Wang Lin told reporters that this reflects the hidden characteristics of this type of group, "the group that sells videos of cats and dogs, it is difficult for ordinary people to find and join them." And generally a group leader will have multiple group numbers, once sealed, immediately pull people to build a new group."
According to Wang Lin, the volunteers who rescued the stray small animal group where she was located had tried to break into the relevant groups, but after entering the group, someone would "assess" and ask the volunteers why they wanted to join the group, whether they knew the "rules", and whether they had similar abuse and killing experiences before. "It's important to prove that you're the same type of person as them in order for you to really reach out to their 'business.'" So the phenomenon that is really exposed is only the tip of the iceberg. ”
In addition to selling videos of cruelty to small animals, there are even more people who use the lives of small animals to extort rescuers. According to media reports, a man in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, pretended to adopt a stray cat, and after the successful adoption, he extorted the rescuer on the condition of the stray cat's life. Some rescuers were asked to transfer more than 1,000 yuan, and the day after they refused to transfer money, they received videos of cat abuse.
Most of the legislation is dominated by moral condemnation, which faces practical difficulties
The reporter combed and found that for animal abusers, most of them are currently morally condemned and punished according to industry norms. For example, the perpetrator of the "boiling water pouring cat" incident in Taiyuan, Shanxi, his employment unit terminated the labor relationship with him after the incident; Fan Mou, a college student in Shandong Province, once tortured the cat to death by fire, electric shock, skinning and other bad means, and filmed the whole process and sold it online, and was withdrawn from the school.
In recent years, some localities have written "prohibition of abuse" into local regulations, but have not stipulated specific rules and punishment methods after violations.
There is no specific anti-animal cruelty legislation at the national level. Cao Mingde, a professor of environmental law at China University of Political Science and Law, believes that an important reason behind this is the lack of active promoters. "From the perspective of legislative procedures, China is basically based on departmental legislation at present, such as the Environmental Protection Law, which is led by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment." And for small animals, who is its spokesperson? In the absence of facilitators, the legislative process is bound to be greatly affected. ”
Liu Hongyan, director of the Ecological Law Research Office of the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "From the perspective of the definition of legal acts, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs's Reply to Recommendation No. 2654 of the Third Session of the 13th National People's Congress, because 'animal protection issues involve multiple complex factors such as industry development, ethnic customs, religious customs, ethics and morality', there are certain difficulties in how to define abusive acts at the legal level. ”
He believes that special anti-animal cruelty legislation will inevitably involve a comprehensive adjustment of the existing national animal protection management system and a fundamental change in social ideology and cultural concepts.
Experts call for special legislation to improve the level of animal protection
Despite the difficulties, several experts interviewed by reporters still insist that anti-animal cruelty is necessary.
Liu Hongyan suggested that the anti-cruelty of animals should be included in the law, and the value guidelines of "ecological civilization" and the development concept of harmonious coexistence between man and nature should be incorporated into China's animal protection legal system, integrate existing laws and regulations, and formulate a systematic and comprehensive "animal protection law", which contains key adjustments to animal welfare, animal protection, animal utilization, anti-cruelty to animals, animal gene management, etc., to comprehensively enhance the awareness of animal protection and the level of animal protection in the whole society.
He also suggested that the public should carry out extensive social supervision, promptly report acts such as animal cruelty and dissemination of relevant videos to the relevant departments for handling, and supervise the inaction or untimely behavior of law enforcement departments.
Cao Mingde put forward his own suggestions from the perspective of online platforms. He believes that online platforms should undertake the necessary review obligations and supervision obligations, strictly review the content released by the platform, promptly delete violent pictures and videos of animal abuse, and at the same time take punitive measures such as banning the names of the publishers and disseminators of relevant information.
"The relevant administrative law enforcement departments should strictly supervise the network platform, and if the dissemination of such videos occurs, the network platform should also be punished accordingly if it does not take timely measures." Cao Mingde said.
Comprehensive Rule of Law Daily, The Paper
Source: CCTV News