China should crack down on cruelty to animals and stop using pandas as political tools, animal rights activists said yesterday, adding that instead of dressing up pandas as symbols of peace, China should respect their lives and achieve peace in a real sense.
Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) Director Wu Hung (朱增宏) made the remarks ahead of the arrival of China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait (ARATS) Chairman Chen Yunlin (陳雲林) today.
“While China gives pandas as political gifts to countries worldwide, we would like to give Chen three gifts in return to express Taiwan’s love and concern for China’s suffering animals,” Wu said.
The first gift, he said, was a investigative report conducted by a dozen international animal rights groups into China’s more than 200 bear farms, where almost 10,000 bears are held in captivity for their bile, a traditional Chinese medicine that is said to be good for liver diseases.
“Though the bears, mostly Asiatic black bears, are protected by CITES [the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora] just like pandas, their gallbladders are hooked to bile extraction tubes every day for their entire lives,” Wu said.
The torture usually lasts three to five years, until the bears die and the corpse is sold for its meat or fur, whereas the usual life expectancy for the animals is about 15 to 30 years, Wu said.
“While China on the one hand reprimands the behavior and suspends the operations of smaller private farms, on the other hand it claims that it has improved the extraction technology and still allows large, state-owned farms to continue,” he said.
After Chen watches the documentary on the bear bile farms the group will give him, hopefully he will close all the bear farms in China, Wu said.
The second gift EAST said it would give Chen was a reality sketch on animals living in zoos.
“Wild animals develop stereotyped behavior when they are caged — such as eating their own feces — though pandas seem well-cared for, in reality they are serving prison terms,” Wu said. “We call on Chen to stop bullying vulnerable animals — if there must be an exchange, we can exchange [former Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman] Lien Chan (連戰) for Chen … If Chen comes to Taiwan, we don’t restrict his mobility. He needn’t sob for not being able to visit Chiayi, he would be welcome to go to Chiayi.”
Wu was referring to Chen’s comments last week, when he sobbed and said he could not make it to Chiayi to visit his friends during his visit.
The last gift, Wu said, was a booklet that EAST had just helped to publish on animal rights and how humans should respect animals and learn to share the earth with them.
“We will visit Mainland Affairs Council Chairwoman Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) on Monday [today] to ask her to give the booklet to Chen,” Wu said.
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