Category: Asia

Outraged researchers oust Maneka Gandhi from Indian lab supervision

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

NEW DELHI–“I am exhausted by this year,”
Maneka Gandhi e-mailed to ANIMAL PEOPLE on New
Year’s Eve. “I lost three jobs, two of my
oldest dogs, both 17, and all the elections in
my constituency. The only thing that I kept this
year was my temper, but I would be happy to lose
that as well! The only thing I gained was
weight.”
Technically Mrs. Gandhi lost the first of
the three jobs in November 2001, when Prime
Minister of India A.P. Vajpayee reassigned her
from Minister of Culture to Minister of
Statistics, after she clashed with the Korean
ambassador over his allegedly eating dogs.

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High-energy post-Soviet activists do everything but raise money

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

MOSCOW, KIEV, KHARKOV-A sociologist or political scientist
probably could not design a better comparative experiment in starting
an animal advocacy movement than is now underway in Moscow, the
largest city in Russia, and Kiev and Kharkov, the two largest
cities in the Ukraine.
Russia and the Ukraine are neighbors, the most prominent
remnants of the former Soviet Union, sharing parallel history,
ethnicity, and standards of living, and post-Soviet birth rates
that are among the seven lowest in the world, but have active
rivalries dating back more than 1,000 years.
Their ancient kings conquered each other, their forced
alliances held Napoleon and Hitler at bay, and they are now racing
into economic development and social/political westernization at a
breakneck pace.

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Ivory dealer vanishes after CITES eases ban

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

SANTIAGO, Chile; Lilongwe, Malawi–Peter Wang, also known
as Peter Onn, Y.S. Wong, and Wang Yong Shi, recently eluded a
police cordon around his home in Lilongwe, Malawi, and disappeared
just as he was about to be arrested, revealed correspondent Rory
Carroll of The Guardian on December 27, 2002.
“Investigators have told The Guardian,” Carroll wrote,
“that an apparent breakthrough in June against a vast smuggling
network has evaporated. Six metric tons of ivory bound for Japan,”
representing the deaths of about 600 elephants, “was intercepted in
Singapore, but the ringleaders escaped and the trafficking
continues, leaving game parks littered with mutilated carcasses.”
Wang, Carroll said, “is accused of being the lynchpin in a
network of African poachers and Asian buyers who flouted the global
ivory trade ban introduced in 1989.”

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China learns from Korean World Cup bashing

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:

BEIJING, CHENGDU–Closing 35 small bear bile farms and
taking 97 bears into sanctuary care since October 2000, Animals Asia
Foundation founder Jill Robinson was shocked in early December 2002
when International Fund for Animal Welfare acting China director
Zhang Li and World Society for the Protection of Animals director of
wildlife Victor Watkins insinuated to London Sunday Times Beijing
correspondent Lynne O’Donnell that her work might have provided cover
for expansion of the bear bile farming and poaching industries.

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Tongdaeng the street dog reawakens Thai sense of duty toward animals

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2003:

BANGKOK–For the second time in five years a street dog has
grabbed the attention and affection of Thailand,  reminding Thais
that kindness toward animals is a national tradition as well as a
Buddhist teaching and moral obligation.
Among modern nations,  only India has a longer documented
history of acknowledging duties toward animals.  At that, the
difference is slim.  The animal-loving Indian emperor Asoka sent
missionaries to Thailand to teach Buddhism in the third century B.C.,
only 250 years after the Buddha died.

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“Well-meaning” wildlife traffic? CITES weighs Taiping gorilla case

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2002:

TAIPING, Malaysia; SANTIAGO, Chile–Few points on earth
are farther apart, with more open sea and sky between them, than
Taiping, Malaysia, home of the struggling Taiping Zoo, and
Santiago, Chile, the host city for the 12th Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species Conference of the Parties,
called CITES-COP 2002 for short.
Yet the Taiping Zoo and CITES-COP 2002 had an awkward issue
to deal with in mid-November, having to do with the zoo illegally
buying baby gorillas in the name of conservation. The facts were
less in dispute than the intentions behind the January 2002
transaction–and the closest resemblance to common ground between the
positions of Taiping and the CITES Secretariat, across 6,000 miles
of Pacific Ocean, might have been the rolling deck of a Japanese
whaling ship.

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Cow-slaughter hits flashpoint

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2002:

MUMBAI, DELHI, India– Animal welfare inspector Abdul
Sattar Sheikh, 45, of People for Animals/Mumbai, was hospitalized
and “struggling for his life,” the Times of India reported, after a
gang of illegal butchers beat him with iron rods on October 16.
Whether Sheikh would ever walk again unassisted was in
considerable doubt.
PfA-Mumbai, partnered with Beauty Without Cruelty-India, had
just raided an unlicensed slaughterhouse. The investigators
proceeded to the Bandra police station afterward to file criminal
charges against the alleged offenders.

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A new deal for street dogs on the Turk beach where a Greek god turned dog to win a girl

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2002:

FETHIYE, Turkey–Known for a balmy climate, golden beaches,
and ruins representing many of the most important episodes in the
past 3,000 years of human civilization, the coastal Mediterranean
town of Fethiye, Turkey, has since Roman times been a popular
vacation spot.
The work of the Fethiye Friends of Animals Association may
also some day be seen as historically significant. The FFAA is
operating the first successful sterilization-and-release program to
control street dogs in Asia Minor. The FFAA program has already
become a regionally influential demonstration of how to changing the
often cruel dynamics of the Turkish animal/human relationship. As
the program expands, it could become a catalyst for changing the
prevailing models of animal care and control throughout western Asia.

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Turkey lacks humane fundraising tradition

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2002:

ISTANBUL, Turkey–“Although Perihan Agnelli is only
scratching at the surface of the stray dog problem on the south
coast, she is doing a very good job of self-promotion and of winning
governmental endorsement. She is showing a lot of initiative and
business sense in soliciting donations,” British garment
manufacturer Robert Smith wrote in a September 17 e-mail to the
Society for the Protection of Stray Animals (SHKD), whose Natural
Dog Shelter at the sprawling Kemerburgaz Rubbish Dump Project outside
Istanbul he has sponsored for nearly three years.

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