A controversial 10-day dog slaughtering festival has commenced in Yuling, China, despite truckloads of protesting animal-rights activists both from China and abroad, who are exerting efforts to rescue an estimated 10,000 canines destined to be killed for their meat.
One of the activists, 37-year-old Hawaiian native Marc Ching, flew to the city located in Guanxi province together with his companion Valarie Ianniello to liberate 1,000 dogs from six slaughterhouses on Tuesday.
He shared snippets of the life-changing mission on his Facebook page.
“A thousand breaths that would die here in the dark. A thousand lives that would bleed like blood left there upon [the] ground. These dogs, they are brothers. They are sisters. They are fathers and mothers. They are children. They deserve a chance,” Ching pleaded in the video’s caption.
The Independent and the Los Angeles Weekly reported that Ching’s recent visit to Yulin was his seventh rescue trip to Asia in the past year. He previously shut down merciless slaughterhouses in Cambodia, South Korea and Vietnam, and tried to do the same in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Due to his perilous missions, he experienced being tortured and questioned by authorities.
“There’s this moment where you come into the slaughterhouse and the dogs are screaming, and when you rescue them they know who you are,” Ching told LA Weekly. Most of the time, Ching disguises as an undercover meat buyer and has recorded clips of savage slaughters. He said he had witnessed dogs being burned alive with blow torches, beaten with bats and scalded with boiling water.
The Yulin Dog Meat Festival signals the start of summer solstice, during which Chinese people believe that consuming dog meat will help them cope with the scorching summer heat. Gianna Francesca Catolico
