500 animal lovers protest over brutal pet attacks in Hong Kong

Nov 12, 2007, 2:20 GMT

Hong Kong - Animal lovers in Hong Kong were Monday celebrating the success of a protest march against what they claim is police apathy towards attacks on pets.

Around 500 people holding up banners and giant cardboard cut-out cats and dogs took part in the demonstration Sunday sparked by a case involving a kitten found dumped with its rear legs hacked off.

The case was the latest in a series of apparently random attacks on stray cats and dogs in the former British colony which animal rights groups claim police do not take seriously enough.

Protestors say that when they report cases of animal abuse to police, which they say are running at a rate of around 10 a month, officers tell them they do not have the resources to help them.

Last year, animal lovers were horrified by a series of cases in which newborn kittens had their legs snapped before being dumped on the streets in Hong Kong's urban Mongkok district.

In April this year, a school chef was jailed for 21 days for killing a 10-day-old kitten by throwing it repeatedly to the ground.

The Hong Kong government last year increased the penalty for acts of animal cruelty from a maximum jail term of six months and a 600-US-dollar fine to three years in prison and a 25,600-US-dollar fine.

Keeping pets is a relatively recent practice in the former British colony where a generation ago cats and dogs were eaten as a winter dish, but pets have boomed in popularity in the past 15 years.