Source: CCTV News
Along with the tipper's request to "fall five times and hit five times", an orange-white kitten was slammed to the ground. At the same time, in the video message area, there are still people who constantly brush comments such as "hit with a stick" and "fall hard".
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 viewer can customize the way to abuse and kill the cat as long as they pay for it. In the video, the kittens that are constantly beaten shrink helplessly in the corner, and the cat abusers repeatedly emphasize in the live broadcast, "You say we can fight as much as you say!" ”
The investigation by the reporter of "Rule of Law Daily" found that behind the abuse of cats and dogs, there is also a black industrial chain such as video trafficking 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.
A number of small animal rescuers and experts interviewed by reporters believe that at present, China lacks legal deterrence for the abuse of small animals such as cats and dogs, resulting in repeated prohibitions and even the formation of a black industrial chain of abuse of cats and dogs, and it is recommended to 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 enhance the awareness of animal protection and animal protection in the whole society.
Animal cruelty is frequent
The use of means is extremely cruel
Li Kunmin is a doctor at a pet hospital in Beijing's Chaoyang district, where he has treated many kittens and puppies with diseases. Not long ago, Li Kunmin received a different "patient": a stray cat with trauma and blurred flesh and blood, already dying. After a detailed diagnosis, Li Kunmin judged that the kitten had been artificially beaten with sticks, the skin and flesh were cracked, and even the wound had been suppurated. He immediately treated the kitten, and two weeks later, the kitten recovered to health and was adopted by well-wishers.
This was the first time that Li Kunmin had so intuitively come into contact with an abused stray cat, and he was hit with a huge shock: "I don't understand it very much. Kittens don't hurt people, even if you don't like it, there's no need to hurt it! ”
Also very incomprehensible about cat abuse is Beijing citizen Wang Lin (pseudonym). She still remembers what happened that evening 6 years ago when a stray white cat she rescued was skinned from its tail and bloodied out of the grass of the community's life square.
The tail is crucial to the cat's movement, without the tail, the cat's running, climbing, jumping will be affected. "In the end, the cat's tail was not saved, and its ability to survive was greatly reduced." Remembering the scene when she wrapped the stray cat with her clothes and brought it home, the cat struggled fiercely in her arms, and Wang Lin's eye sockets were moist.
Wang Lin is the head of a group of small stray animals in Beijing. 10 years ago, she and a group of friends came together to rescue stray animals, and spontaneously paid for the protection and rescue of stray animals. Because of the limited ability of individual adoption, they selected more than a dozen group protection points in the city and suburbs of Beijing, and after communicating with the community neighborhood committee and the property, some stray cats were centrally cared for at the group protection point, and every day there were fixed personnel feeding the stray cats in the group protection point.
Skinned kittens, abusive animals after pretending to be adopters, instructing their dogs to chase and bite stray cats at group care points... Doing animal rescue for many years, Wang Lin has seen and heard too many unbelievable acts of cruelty to small animals.
Because of this, when the reporter proposed that he wanted to visit the group protection point, Wang Lin bluntly said that it was "not appropriate": "There have been cases where someone specially came to steal the cat after the group protection point was exposed, and we hope to keep the group protection point and the rescue point as confidential as possible." ”
Selling videos of cat abuse for profit
Spawned a black industrial chain
It is worth noting that the harm of animal cruelty does not stop at the abuse itself. More and more people sell and disseminate videos of animal cruelty for profit or other purposes, forming a secret black industrial chain.
Recently, an article titled "Men spend 40 yuan to buy 100G cat abuse videos, live rewards can also customize the method of death" circulated on the Internet. According to the article, the cruelty of abusing cats such as electric shock, peeling, fire, boiling water, and broken legs with pliers is far beyond the imagination of ordinary people.
"Mao Shi", who was once a cat abuse video seller, disclosed in an interview with the media that there is a complete industrial chain for the sale of cat abuse videos. In the industrial chain, there are cat abusers who specialize in recording videos of abuse and killing, professional sellers who organize video resources to be packaged and sold, intermediaries who specialize in expanding customers in various channels, and various sellers.
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, it also shows that groups that match the filter criteria cannot be found.
Wang Lin told reporters that concealment is a major feature of this type of group, "like a group that sells videos of abuse 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 videos of animal cruelty, there are even more people who use animal lives to blackmail people.
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 received a video of cat abuse the day after refusing to transfer.
Why do small animal abuse incidents occur frequently and breed related industrial chains?
Liu Hongyan, director of the Ecological Law Research Office of the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, analyzed that animal cruelty, especially for non-wild animals, is not effectively regulated by China's current laws.
"At present, the acts of trafficking, hunting, stealing, transportation, illegal trade, and indiscriminate consumption of wild animals can be punished accordingly in accordance with relevant laws and relevant regulations. But for a single act of animal cruelty, there is basically no corresponding law. Liu Hongyan said that in addition, with the rise of the network economy in recent years, some profit-seeking people continue to break through the bottom line of social morality and try to earn traffic profits by publishing animal abuse videos on the Internet, which is also one of the important reasons.
Liu Hongyan believes that the violence of animal cruelty and the sale of related videos for profit and the spread of violence not only break through the bottom line of human civilization, but also suspected of violating the law, which may mislead minors to follow the example of violence.
"If this kind of spread of violence is not effectively stopped, it will inevitably bring unstable factors to society, and in the long run, it will have a serious negative impact on the progress and harmonious development of social civilization." Don't let the absence of the law be a disguised cause of condoning animal cruelty and its spread. Liu Hongyan said.
Most of them are mainly moral condemnation
Legislation 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 such bad means as fire, electric shock, and peeling, 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. For example, the Beijing Municipal Animal Epidemic Prevention Regulations issued in 2014 stipulate that animal breeders should not abandon or abuse animals, and the Changsha Dog Management Regulations, which came into effect on May 1, 2019, stipulate that no unit or individual may abuse dogs.
However, there is no specific anti-animal cruelty legislation at the national level. Cao Mingde, a professor of environmental law at The China University of Political Science and Law, believes that an important reason behind this is the lack of an active promoter. "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. ”
In Liu Hongyan's view, from the name of the law, the scope of adjustment of the "Anti-Cruelty to Animals Law" is relatively single, and it is debatable whether the introduction of a special "Anti-Cruelty Law" will certainly meet the ethical requirements and efficiency demands of society for animal protection; at the same time, the academic community has not yet formed a consensus on anti-cruelty to animal protection legislation.
"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 Thirteenth 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 abuse at the legal level." Liu Hongyan said.
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.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has also mentioned that the abuse of animals in social life is only a very rare phenomenon, more citizens and animals are in harmony, and a special law is formulated for this rare violation of morality, which lacks necessity and can basically be solved by improving existing laws and regulations. It can be seen that the current formulation of anti-animal cruelty legislation is full of obstacles. Liu Hongyan said.
Experts call for special legislation
Improve animal protection
Despite the difficulties, several experts interviewed by reporters still insist that anti-animal cruelty is necessary.
Cao Mingde believes that there is no mandatory legal norm for the abuse of cats and dogs, and can only rely on moral evaluation, and need to rely on the consciousness of the parties and rely on social opinion to maintain order in this regard. However, some people lack shame and shame, and can ignore the evaluation of others, and moral evaluation is obviously not enough to restrain the behavior of such people.
"Under such circumstances, we can no longer allow this kind of unscrupulous and morally low-level behavior to continue, especially if some people still seek illegal benefits from it and affect the moral standards of society as a whole." Therefore, this phenomenon must be regulated by law. Cao Mingde said.
Liu Hongyan proposed that from the perspective of China's legal system related to animal protection, China has promulgated a number of laws and regulations such as the Wildlife Protection Law and the Regulations on the Management of Laboratory Animals, distinguishing animals from livestock and poultry, wild animals and experimental animals, and clarifying their respective protection and management regulations. However, this classification method has drawbacks, with the usefulness of humans as the main distinction and protection basis, and it is impossible to include companion animals and other animals that currently have no direct economic benefit to humans and are of great value to the ecosystem.
In Liu Hongyan's view, if the relevant provisions on anti-animal cruelty are scattered among various laws and regulations, it will not only be difficult to achieve comprehensive protection of existing animals, but also may bring about problems such as "multi-dragon water treatment" in the application of the law.
To this end, 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., and comprehensively improve 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 the network platform, he believes that the network platform should bear the necessary review obligations and supervision obligations, strictly review the content released by the platform, timely delete violent pictures and videos of animal abuse, etc., and at the same time take punitive measures such as banning the number of relevant information publishers and disseminators.
"The relevant administrative law enforcement departments should strictly supervise the network platform, and if the network platform does not take measures in time, it should also be punished accordingly if there is a spread of such videos." Cao Mingde said.
![Extremely cruel! Behind the torture of small animals, there is a "blood-colored trading chain" into the group to hand over the "name"[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)