The order to cull rodents en masse follows a corona infection at a 23-year-old employee of pet store Little Boss. The same mutation was also found in eleven hamsters imported from the Netherlands. As a precaution, two thousand rodents had to be culled from dozens of pet stores and owners who recently bought a hamster were called on to hand over the animal.
Petition
A petition against the “unjust and brutal” order to cull the hamsters has already been signed more than 30,000 times in one day on Wednesday. “Every owner thinks their pet’s life is just as important as their own. The authorities in Hong Kong, the law enforcers, fail to see that they are about to kill many lives that are barely different from our own,” the initiator wrote. “The hamsters are being killed with no evidence that the virus has spread from hamster to humans, it is not a scientific decision. The government is too cruel and inhumane,” said a Hong Kong national who signed the petition.
unwanted hamsters
At least 3,000 people have volunteered to adopt unwanted hamsters in the Telegram group “Cute Hamsters in Hong Kong”. The group fears that owners are under pressure from family or friends to give up the animals. In other Telegram groups, critics question why hamsters should be culled, while the 170 guests at a senior politician’s birthday party earlier this year were quarantined.
Telegram has become hugely popular in Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests in 2019 due to the anonymity of its social media channel. With street demonstrations under national security law that can lead to life in prison, the app serves as the only safe haven for many Hong Kongers to express political dissatisfaction.