The Washington Post - USA (2021-12-22)

A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22 , 2021

The World

MIDDLE EAST

Ex-spy chief: Israel had

role in Soleimani killing

Israel’s former military
intelligence chief said the country
was involved in the U.S. airstrike
that killed Iranian Maj. Gen.
Qasem Soleimani last year. It was
the first public acknowledgment of
Israel’s role in the operation.
Soleimani led the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps’s elite
Quds Force and helped orchestrate
Iran’s involvement with
paramilitary groups abroad. He
was killed in a U.S. drone strike at
the Baghdad airport in January
2020.
A week later, NBC News
reported that Israeli intelligence
helped confirm the details of
Soleimani’s flight from Damascus,
Syria, to Baghdad. Earlier this year,
Yahoo News reported that Israel
“had access to Soleimani’s
numbers” and gave that
intelligence to the United States.
But Maj. Gen. Tamir Heyman,
the now-retired general who led

Israel’s military intelligence until

October, appears to be the first

official to confirm the country’s

involvement.

Heyman’s comments were

published in the November issue

of a Hebrew-language magazine

closely affiliated with Israel’s

intelligence services. The

interview was done in late

September, a couple of weeks

before his retirement from the

military.

The interview was published as

world powers and Tehran were

engaged in negotiations to reach a

new agreement to curb Iran’s

nuclear program. The previous

deal, struck in 2015, unraveled

after the United States unilaterally

withdrew in 2018 and reimposed

crippling sanctions on Iran.

— Associated Press

NIGER

France kills militant tied

to attack on aid workers

France’s military said Tuesday

that it killed a militant leader

linked to the Islamic State who is

thought to have been involved in

the killing of six French aid

workers in Niger in August 2020.

The military said the strike was

critical to prevent an expanding

footprint of the militants, but it

comes as France is drawing down

its presence in the region — a

move that has unsettled West

African governments.

France named the target of

Monday’s strike as Soumana

Boura, the leader of a group of

dozens of militant fighters in the

west of Niger. He was hiding

north of the town of Tillabéri.

French officials said Boura

filmed and publicized the August

attack, one of the worst attacks on

European nationals in the region

in years.

France blames the Islamic

State in the Greater Sahara for the

deaths of about 2,000 to 3,

civilians in the region since 2013.

— Rick Noack

More than 160 migrants drown

off Libya over past week: More

than 160 migrants have drowned

in two shipwrecks off Libya over

the past week, a United Nations

migration official said. Safa

Msehli, a spokeswoman for the

International Organization for

Migration, said at least 102

migrants were reported dead after

their boat capsized off Libya on

Friday. At least eight were rescued,

she said. Three days later, Libya’s

coast guard retrieved the bodies of

at least 62 migrants in another

shipwreck, Msehli said. About

1,500 migrants have drowned this

year along the central

Mediterranean route, she said.

American ex-priest in East

Timor found guilty of sex abuse:

A defrocked American priest

accused of sexually abusing

orphaned and disadvantaged

young girls under his care at his

shelter in East Timor was found

guilty and sentenced to 12 years in

prison, in the first case of its kind

in the staunchly Catholic nation.

Richard Daschbach, 84, who spent

decades as a missionary in the

country’s remote enclave of

Oecusse, faced charges of child

sexual abuse as well as child

pornography and domestic

violence. Separately, a U.S. federal

grand jury indicted Daschbach in

August. He faces seven counts of

engaging in illicit sexual conduct

at the shelter. Daschbach also is

wanted in the United States on

three counts of wire fraud.

— From news services

DIGEST

BY CHRISTIAN SHEPHERD

AND ALICIA CHEN

Xiaoyang has to think for a
minute to figure out how many
dogs he is fostering. “Forty or 50
— something like that,” he even-
tually says.
The stray rescue and re-
homing operation he runs on a
voluntary basis from his yard on
the outskirts of Shenzhen, in
southern China, requires a dawn-
to-dusk schedule of walking,
feeding and cleaning.
His social media feed is a
dedicated stream of adoption
a ds: “One-year-old street dog,
male, gets along with all people,
gentle and lively, neutered, vacci-
nated.” Or “Five-years-old poo-
dle, was abandoned, shy.” The
listed price is always the same:
free.
Like many dog lovers in China,
Xiaoyang was shocked by a re-
cent spate of animal-cruelty inci-
dents that have drawn attention
on social media, and he has been
tracking a fierce national debate
about whether dogs should be
guaranteed better protection in
law. (Cats and other companion
animals, too, he acknowledges
when asked.)
But legislating to prohibit ani-
mal cruelty is an oddly controver-
sial topic in China. While there
are tens of millions of dog and cat
lovers, their calls for change are
often drowned out by a relatively
small but vocal crowd of con-
servative thinkers who believe
caring for animals is elitist, un-
dermines China’s development
and infringes upon the traditions
of those few Chinese who still eat
dog meat.
These sentiments, combined
with concerns from farmers and
slaughterhouses about welfare
provisions undermining profit
and city governments’ fears of
areas being overrun by pets, have
thwarted progress on an animal
protection law that was drafted
in 2009 but has never made it
onto the legislative agenda.
Peter Li, China policy special-
ist at Humane Society Interna-
tional and an associate professor
of East Asian politics at the
University of Houston-Down-
town, likens the polarized discus-
sion over animal welfare in China
to a “civil war” mostly fought
between conservatives and pet
owners, with the former having
maintained the upper hand for
the past decade.
Among the main obstacles to
stronger protections is China’s
vast and expanding network of
factory farms. “The authorities
fear a spillover effect. If you take
action for companion animals,
then the livestock industry could
be the next target,” Li said.
The Chinese government has
remained reluctant to embrace
animal welfare. It instead ap-
proaches pet ownership primari-
ly as an urban management and
public health problem. But a
recent groundswell of anger over
repeat failures to crack down on
animal cruelty is piling pressure
on the authorities’ hands-off ap-
proach.
First, it was outcry over a pet
corgi that was beaten and killed
by hazmat-suit-wearing workers
as part of coronavirus contain-
ment measures after its owner
was placed in quarantine.
Then, a cat living on the
c ampus of Fudan University in
Shanghai turned up dead with

In China, animal protection is tied up by politics

As number of pet lovers grows, so do calls for a law against abuse. But conservatives label effort part of a Western-led conspiracy.

signs of being abused. A univer-

sity security guard in Anhui prov-

ince was fired after he was sus-

pected of hanging to death a dog

from a tree during a roundup of

strays on the campus.

“The most terrifying thing

right now is that this bunch of

sickos work together,” said Xiao -

yang, who asked to be referred to

by a nickname for fear that

talking to Western media could

result in online attacks. “That

there are still people who buy

and watch this stuff — i t’s un-

thinkable.”

The acts of cruelty reignited

already widespread support

among pet owners for a proposal

to add an anti-animal-abuse law

to the legislative agenda of the

National People’s Congress, Chi-

na’s parliament.

Such concerns regularly factor

into conservatives’ attacks on ad-

vocates for animal welfare or

related progressive beliefs, which

they sometimes label as part of a

Western-led conspiracy to under-

mine China’s development.

On the microblog Weibo, a

hashtag called “root out extrem-

ist animal protection groups” has

8 million views and is regularly

used by commentators to attack

advocates who support anti-

cruelty legislation.

In October, when an animal

rights activist surnamed Zhang

tipped off police in Sichuan prov-

ince about a suspected illegal

shipment of 400 dogs, likely for

consumption, she and two fellow

volunteers were surrounded and

beaten by a group of assailants

wielding wooden clubs.

This month, a documentary

about vegetarianism, featuring

Chinese celebrities and under-

scoring the poor treatment of

farm animals, was accused by a

conservative scholar in the na-

tionalist tabloid Global Times of

being the result of “blind wor-

ship” of Western values and

views.

Watching the furor over the

corgi killing, Chen Yuelin, 37, a

volunteer for an organization

f ocusing on stray cats and dogs in

Quanzhou city, in the southeast-

ern province of Fujian, felt help-

less.

Rules on the quarantine pro-

cedures for pets may be possible,

but there has been “basically no

progress” on animal protection

legislation in recent years be-

cause awareness of the issue is

uncommon beyond pet owners,

she said.

Prominent groups advocating

for anti-cruelty laws are often

accused of being radical. “Many

people would say, ‘There are lots

of homeless people on the streets.

Why would you rescue stray cats

and dogs instead of them?’ ”

Chen said.

Any improvement in the well-

being of China’s companion ani-

mals in recent years has been

almost entirely the result of inde-

pendent civilian groups and vol-

unteers such as Xiaoyang. They

operate with little or no official

support and take it upon them-

selves to care for strays, includ-

ing getting them vaccinated and

neutered.

As the population of pet own-

ers has grown, government atti-

tudes have gradually shifted.

C hina now has more pet owners

than any other country except

the United States. Last year, offi-

cials removed dogs from a list of

animals classified as livestock.

But the primary focus of policy

is on managing, not protecting,

China’s pet population. Fearful of

animal-borne diseases and out-

of-control animals, the authori-

ties emphasize “civilized” pet

ownership.

In some cases, official media

has started to cautiously take the

side of pet lovers. In response to

the outcry over the corgi killing,

state broadcaster CCTV said

p ets of quarantined individuals

should be handled differently

from “livestock” but did not rule

out the state’s right to dispose of

animals when epidemic preven-

tion required. Police have

cracked down on videos and

images of animal torture being

bought and sold online.

But activists fear that govern-

ment inaction on animal protec-

tions will continue as long as

conservative voices can domi-

nate the discussion and sow

doubts about the true motives of

animal rights advocates.

“The movement is absolutely

native to China, but it got a lot of

help from international groups,”

said Li, of Humane Society Inter-

national. “When we provide as-

sistance, it’s not because we are

trying to make China collapse.”

[email protected]

HECTOR RETAMAL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

A man transports rescued dogs that will be sent to a Buddhist temple near Shanghai that shelters animals. Improvement in the lives of China’s animals in recent years has

been almost entirely due to independent groups and volunteers. An animal protection law was drafted in 2009 but has never made it onto the government’s legislative agenda.

JOHANNES EISELE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Cats gather in their enclosure at the Bao’en Temple. China now has

more pet owners than any other country except the United States.

HECTOR RETAMAL/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Rescued dogs in Shanghai. Official views are slowly shifting: Last

year, dogs were taken off a list of animals classified as livestock.

JEFFREY GROENEWEG/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

Sheep stand in a field as the first winter frost blankets the fields in

Oudeland van Strijen, Netherlands, o n Tuesday. Amid the winter

solstice Tuesday, the Netherlands was i n the early days of a lockdown

to stem the spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus.