Report: Chinese Communists Beat Quarantined Woman’s Corgi to Death

A municipal health worker in southeastern China’s Shangrao city beat a woman’s pet dog to death with a crowbar on Friday while the woman was undergoing a state-run coronavirus quarantine outside her residence, Taiwan News reported Monday, citing security camera footage from inside the woman’s home that captured the incident.

The security footage shows two people wearing white hazmat suits approaching a corgi as it cowers behind a dining room table in his owner’s apartment. One of the unidentified health workers is seen brandishing an iron crowbar at the dog. The same worker then strikes the corgi forcefully in its face with the iron rod. The dog tries to shield himself behind the table’s legs, but the two workers move the dining table so that the dog has nowhere to hide. The dog is next pictured trying to escape to an adjacent room of the apartment and soon runs out of frame.

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“In a video interview with a local media outlet, the dog’s owner, identified only by her surname Fu, said she witnessed the beating through an app on her phone connected to her home security camera and used a speaker embedded in the camera to beg the workers to leave her dog alone, but her pleas were ignored,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) relayed on November 15.

“Ms. Fu said she heard the dog crying off-camera and later saw the workers carrying a yellow bag away after the whimpers stopped. Blood could be seen on the ground afterward, she said,” according to the report.

Fu uploaded the tragic video footage of her beloved pet corgi’s final moments to Weibo, China’s government-controlled Twitter-like microblogging platform, on November 12 as part of her personal account of the incident. In an accompanying text statement, Fu reportedly wrote that Shangrao city authorities ordered all residents of her apartment complex to enter a coronavirus quarantine at a nearby hotel without their pets late on November 11. The edict came after city health officials detected a single new case of coronavirus at Fu’s residential compound. Fu said she “confirmed with community staff several times that her dog wouldn’t be taken away or killed,” according to WSJ. The owner added that she tested negative for coronavirus while in mandatory quarantine. There has been no indication by either Fu or the Shangrao city government that Fu’s pet corgi was ever tested for coronavirus.

Video footage of the corgi’s horrific beating circulated heavily on Chinese social media from November 12 through November 13, garnering a high volume of both views and criticism. Shangrao’s municipal government responded to the backlash by issuing a statement via its official Weibo account on the night of November 13. The press release said the unidentified health worker seen striking the dog with a crowbar had been relieved of his post.

After offering Fu a perfunctory apology for the incident, Shangrao’s government claimed the municipal workers entered the woman’s apartment to disinfect her home in an effort to prevent the spread of coronavirus. The statement coldly detailed how the health staff enacted a “harmless disposal” of Fu’s pet corgi. The term in Mandarin “could also be translated as ‘handling [something] to be made harmless,'” What’s On Weibo noted on November 14.

Chinese health officials have killed or allegedly killed the pets of people forcibly detained in state-run coronavirus quarantines on at least two other occasions in recent weeks, though Weibo is rife with allegations that city workers have killed several other pets under similar circumstances.

“This month, a Chengdu resident in southwestern China claimed on the social media platform Xiaohongshu that her cats were killed after she was moved from her home into quarantine,” the South China Morning Post reported on November 12.

“According to Chinese law, wild animals or livestock infected during a pandemic can be killed. But cats and dogs are not listed as livestock,” the newspaper noted at the time.

Government officials in northeastern China’s Harbin city forcibly euthanized three pet cats on September 28 after the cats tested positive for coronavirus while their owner was away in a state-run quarantine camp.

“Despite appeals from the cat owner, the three cats were put to sleep in what has been viewed as a harsh and extreme measure by Chinese authorities to control the disease spread,” Britain’s Independent reported at the time.

Experts believe domesticated animals pose an extremely low risk of transmitting coronavirus to humans.

“At this time, there is no evidence that animals play a significant role in spreading SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, to people,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote on October 5.

“So far, in the whole pandemic, there have been no confirmed reports of cat to human infection,” Vanessa Barrs, a professor at the City University of Hong Kong who specializes in animal health and disease, told Reuters on September 29.