In Turkmenistan there are dogs and dogs, those in Serie A which are dedicated to national days and gigantic golden statues, and those who are rounded up in the street to be killed and thrown in landfills. But the contradictions do not stop there: children are also involved in this public massacre.
These stray animal raiding campaigns have been running for years on the eve of major state and government events, and the latest case was recorded in early February as the country was preparing for the Halk Maslahaty (People’s Council) session scheduled for on 11 February in the capital Ashgabat.
Animal rights activists in the former Soviet republic, according to the Rfe / Rl website, have denounced that the Turkmen authorities have not only hired workers from industrial facilities, but also hired children with small cash rewards to use them. in locating, capturing and killing animals or taking them to a hangar on the outskirts of Ashgabat, where they are left to die without food and water.
Animal rights activists who raised the issue online did not go unnoticed: according to Rfe / Rl, the authorities sent checks to their homes and offices warning them of possible repercussions.
Already last year, several eyewitnesses residing in Ashgabat, anonymously, had told how these “death squads” targeted not only strays, but also domestic dogs and cats: “They leave sausages and poisoned fish in areas where people they walk their dogs, or they push poisoned food under the doors of pet owners’ homes, ”they told Rfe / Rl.
Some of the killings take place in front of frightened residents, including children: in 2019, these workers reportedly beat a dog and its puppies to death inside a kindergarten as a group of horrified children watched the scene.
In a difficult economic period in Turkmenistan and the region, there are also reports that an increasing number of pets are being abandoned because owners say they cannot afford to feed them.
To make this situation even more bitter there is the contradiction of a country and its president Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov who wanted to celebrate; with a national day, complete with holidays, for Alabai, the Central Asian shepherd used to protect the flocks from the attack of the wolves. And as if that weren’t enough, in November 2020 a giant statue of gold was erected, six meters high, with the appearance of this breed, while Berdymukhamedov himself in the past gave Alabai puppies to leaders considered “friends”, including the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Emir of Qatar.
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