Macaques seen inside the cages on sale at a wildlife market. Only expletives can described those who would perpetrate such evil.
As World Health Day approaches on 7 April, our mainland masters deserve bouquets and brickbats for their handling of Covid-19 and its likely source, wildlife markets.
BOUQUET: The Chinese Communist Party has finally got it. They didn’t heed the warnings about zoonotic diseases and their main sources, wildlife markets, at the time of SARS in 2003. Just a few hundred people died of SARS, believed to have jumped from civet cats to humans via a Guangdong wildlife market. Now faced with a pandemic that has rocked the whole world, the CCP has recognised the danger. Party minions have closed the country’s notorious, evil wildlife markets, according to the World Wildlife Fund. In these markets vile cruelty was the norm. Pangolins, wild cats, birds, racoon dogs, snakes, turtles and other creatures were confined, without water or food for much of the time, in terrible conditions for weeks or months, waiting to be bought by expletives, who would kill and eat them. Thanks to Covid-19, much of this evil has now been stopped in China, WWF says. The animal welfare organisation has called on Hong Kong, Macau and other SE Asian territories to close these markets, too. It quoted a survey of 1,000 HK people that found 94 per cent want local wildlife markets shut.
Animals Asia’s slogan, “The only solution is kindness”, is so right, but there is not enough of it and not enough AAs in this world to eradicate the cruelty.
BRICKBAT: Failure to comply fully with the World Health Organisation’s study of the origin of Covid-19. Fourteen countries, including the US, UK, Canada and Australia, have accused the Party of obstructing full investigation by WHO scientists during their four weeks in Wuhan last January. It took months while the world reeled for WHO’s team of scientists to get access to Wuhan. The head of WHO, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, admitted the resulting report “was not extensive enough”. The 14 finger-pointing countries said China was guilty of “withholding access to complete, original data and samples”. The Covid-19 virus “most likely” jumped from bats to humans via an intermediary animal, WHO said. The theories that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab or came into the country on frozen-food are unlikely to be true, but should be further studied.
MORE FROM WORLD WILDLIFE FUND: The organisation called on governments to end wildlife trade sales and markets and farms “as this is the prime source of future disease outbreaks”. “China has now taken action to avert future disease outbreaks with the ban on the sale of wildlife and the closure of disease-source wildlife markets in China. Illegal physical and online sales of pangolins, civets, racoon dogs, wild cats and other creatures must be ended by authorities. Hong Kong must stop being one of the world’s major transport hubs for the world wildlife trade.”
HONG KONG BUZZ COMMENT: Chief Executive Carrie Lam showed in her 2019 policy address that she cares about animal welfare. She said her administration would tighten the law and raise penalties for cruelty to animals and the police would take the matter seriously. This came to pass. We have seen increased police action on animal cruelty cases including in the Sai Kung-CWB district. Buzz has copied the CEO’s Office stories on the cruelty and scale of Hong Kong’s evil wildlife trade. We read her 2020 policy address hopefully, looking for action against the vileness, but were disappointed. Perhaps this year, Ms Lam will act . . .
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