Slaughter of dogs

Opinion: May 15, 2012 at 12:00a.m.

By Nigar Musayeva

Institute for War & Peace Reporting

BAKU, Azerbaijan

Authorities here are anxious to put on a good appearance when they host the Eurovision song contest, scheduled to be broadcast across Europe in late May.

They’re fixing up older buildings and repairing the city’s streets. And they’re shooting a vast number of stray dogs.

One resident described the shocking scene.

“There were a few dogs in the courtyard of the house I was working on, and we used to feed them,” said Ahmad Dadashov, a construction worker. “A truck drew up and two men got out, one of them with a gun. Without paying us any heed, the one with the gun started shooting the dogs. One of the dogs managed to hide, but the others were killed. The two men just loaded the dead dogs into the back of the truck and drove off.

“It was the most horrible scene I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’m 42.”

Concerned citizens

City authorities insist that dogs are only destroyed when there is no other way of dealing with them. But activist groups in Baku have logged dozens of calls from concerned citizens.

“I was taking my grandson to school one morning when we saw a terrible sight. Workers from social services had come to shoot the dogs,” Gulnara Akhundova recalled. “It was like a nightmare. Although I tried to get the boy out of there as quickly as I could, I can still hear the howl of that wounded dog.”

Akhundova said her grandson was traumatized by the incident.

“We spent a long time persuading him that the dogs hadn’t been killed, they’d just been taken somewhere nice,” she said. “I think it’s dreadful. I can’t understand how such frightening things can happen in a civilized country.”

Valerie Garber, head of an animal charity called Friends, said her organization was receiving numerous reports of shootings.

“Often the animals are just wounded and are left bleeding. People who witness it get very stressed,” she said. “People want to protect these dogs, which they love and feed. But the people with guns can’t be dissuaded. There have even been fights over this.”

Azer Garayev, head of the Azerbaijan Society for the Protection of Animals, says the practice of killing stray dogs is counterproductive. Instead of making Baku look good for Eurovision, it’s harming the whole country’s reputation.

“Despite the fact that Azerbaijan was the first country in the former Soviet Union to sign up to the European Convention for the Protection of Pet Animals, you still see cases of extreme brutality against animals. The requirements of the convention are not being met,” he said. “Under this convention, stray animal populations must be regulated using humane methods, specifically by sterilization and special shelters.”

Thousands killed

Mansura Rasulzade, the head of environmental group Alliance, says that authorities killed around 23,000 dogs in 2009, with another 53,000 executed in 2010. She said it would be far more cost-effective to catch and sterilize dogs to prevent them from breeding.

Ahmad Mammadov, head of the city department in charge of dealing with stray dogs, denied that shootings were taking place on a mass scale. Only sick animals were being destroyed, he said.

Critics of the campaign note, however, that Mammadov has previously suggested that the hides of stray dogs could be used to make clothing.

Nigar Musayeva is a reporter in Azerbaijan who writes for The Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a nonprofit organization that trains journalists in areas of conflict. Distributed by MCT Information Services.