The exhaustion in Shanghai due to confinement was coupled in recent days with indignation against the authorities, after several videos showing the cruel killing of pets of people infected with COVID went viral.
Authorities argue that there is a fear of becoming infected through dogs and cats, amid the strict “zero COVID” policy mandated by the Xi Jinping regime. But far from seeking a confinement or appropriate measures for pets, it has been found on several occasions that agents violently kill animals that suffer defenseless.
In a video, verified by the AFP, you can see an official dressed in a protective suit beating a dog to death in the middle of the street. A local media outlet reported on Thursday that the neighborhood committee had confessed to eliminating the animal for “fear of becoming infected”, admitting that it was a “thoughtless” act.
Such was the repudiation that the video managed to spread through social networks despite strict internet censorship in China, and you hear how the dog screams in pain and neighbors complain for cruelty.
The images were recorded by a neighbor of the Xinghai Jiayuan complex and show how the worker beats three times with a shovel a corgi dog that had run behind the bus that took his caregiver to an isolation center. The employee explained: “People are afraid of bacteria and transmission. We haven't thought it through. Our director told the owner that he would be compensated later.”
The infected person was torn between letting their dog go outside in the hope that it would survive, or keeping it inside, where they could starve if they stayed away from home for a long time. Finally, he decided to leave it out without imagining the fatal outcome so immediate.
The tension is also due to the fact that the Shanghai district where the incident occurred, Pudong, has been closed since March 28 in what was supposed to be a short-term attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus, but which has continued indefinitely as the number of cases continues to rise.
In this context, videos of animal abuse by Chinese officials are multiplying. It is possible that the images correspond to other moments of the pandemic, as scenes of animal abuse have been repeated in the city.
The measures take a toll on the population and tension reaches social networks, in which videos are shared of residents' fights with toilets, lack of food during quarantines or the abuse and cruelty slaughter of pets of isolated people, and where the effectiveness of confinements begins to be questioned given the high transmissibility of omicron.
Many of Shanghai's 25 million residents seem tired of the triumphalist speeches of the ruling Communist Party, and they pour their fury on social media in the face of food shortages, restrictions and excessive zeal on the part of the authorities.
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