CHINA: Scores of angry dog-lovers took to the streets of the Chinese capital at the weekend, demonstrating against a recent crackdown on Peking's pet pooches, who are being targeted as part of an anti-rabies campaign.
Rabies has become a bigger killer in China than either tuberculosis or Aids and the government has been rigorously enforcing dog-ownership rules, including a 35cm height limit and confiscating and culling oversized hounds.
The ever more draconian measures have prompted a series of rallies in the capital. In Saturday's demonstration, protesters held up signs saying "Dogs are our friends" and "Raising a dog is a right, not a privilege".
Such public demonstrations are strictly forbidden in China, and a number of protesters were detained by police wearing riot gear. But pet-owners are prepared to go to unusual lengths to protect their mutts against what they see as the arbitrary wielding of power by faceless bureaucracy.
Dogs and other pets were shunned in the days of Chairman Mao Zedong as bourgeois decadence - "capitalist running dog" was a favourite insult during the Cultural Revolution - but attitudes to pets have changed with increased prosperity.
Rules on dog ownership were eased a few years ago and dogs are now a common sight on the streets of the capital.
The rules include a one-dog policy, restricting the number of canines per household to one, and anyone who wants to own a dog has to pay a €100 initial fee and €50 annual fee.
The height restriction is limited to the inner city and in the villas in the city's suburbs, Golden Retrievers and Rottweilers are an increasingly common sight. Since then the number of licensed dogs has risen to 550,000, which is a rise of 20 per cent on last year. The Beijing Association of Small Animal Protection reckons there are over one million dogs in Beijing.
In the first nine months of this year, more than 100,000 people in Beijing were bitten and nine were diagnosed with rabies, according to the health ministry. There were 2,254 rabies infections in the whole country during the same period, with 318 deaths.
In July, a community in southwest China's Yunnan Province reported the deaths of three people from rabies and 50,000 dogs were slaughtered, some of them beaten to death with hammers as their horrified owners watched.