Animal rights activists condemn culling practices for stray dogs in Karachi

A stray dog on a street as people line up maintaining social distancing to buy groceries from a governmental subsidized shop during a nationwide lockdown in Karachi in April. (Files/AFP)
Short Url
Updated 22 July 2020
Follow

Animal rights activists condemn culling practices for stray dogs in Karachi

  • Officials say thousands of stray canines killed so far in the city initiative

KARACHI: The frequent culling of dogs in Pakistan has angered both animal rights activists and citizens, but officials in Sindh province say it is necessary because packs of wild strays pose a threat to residents, with up to 5,000 people dying of rabies every year.

However, experts aren’t convinced.

Last Tuesday, Dr.  Naseem Salahuddin, the head of the Rabies Free Pakistan (RFP) project, woke up to discover that months of work by her team to vaccinate and neuter stray dogs in Karachi, the capital of Sindh, had been thrown away.

Overnight, municipal authorities in an upscale neighborhood in southern Karachi had killed at least 50 strays that Salahuddin’s team had treated. And this was not the first time this had happened.

Authorities estimate the citywide operation has culled thousands of dogs by shooting or using poison tablets hidden in food but do not have a full count for all six districts that make up Karachi city.

“You work from dawn to dusk, put in your best effort, spend time and resources, and they kill the dogs without any reason — it’s like being stabbed in the back,” said Salahuddin.

Officials say it is part of the city’s anti-rabies measures, mainly since vaccines for the disease, mostly imported from India, always seem to be in short supply at Karachi hospitals.

Rabies is a neglected disease in Pakistan, with scant data available, although the cases of dog bites are rising, doctors and officials said.

Around 150 patients come to Karachi hospitals daily with dog bites, doctors said. Indus Hospital treated more than 7,000 cases of dog bites last year and said it had already handled 4,000 cases this year. Dr Seemin Jamali, executive director of Jinnah Hospital, the largest health facility in Sindh, said the hospital treated 6,000 patients for dog bites between January and July.

Street animals, particularly dogs, are often a part of the urban landscape in developing countries such as Pakistan. In Karachi, a city of more than 15 million, it is common to see strays lurking in public parks, guarding street corners and howling in neighborhoods at night. Joggers say they have to carry a stick to scare dogs away, and cyclists keep stones in their pockets to throw at chasers.

Malik Fayyaz, the chairman of the district municipal council in southern Karachi, confirmed that authorities were killing, as well as sterilizing, dogs due to a rising number of complaints from residents.

He said a vaccination and spaying project the council had started in collaboration with Indus Hospital had stalled due to the coronavirus pandemic, and culling strays was the only option.

Another program launched last year in Karachi’s district central, the largest municipal cooperation in the city, had also stalled.

Rehan Hashmi, the central district council chairman, said dogs had to be taken off the streets even if that meant killing them. Authorities would stop killing dogs, he added, if there was a program that could vaccinate and spay “100 percent stray dogs.”

“Saving a human life is more important than saving the life of a dog,” Hashmi said.

In August 2016, the district council of south Karachi killed 800 stray dogs, pushing lawyer Muhammad Asad Iftikhar to file a petition in the Sindh High Court. Last December, the court finally directed authorities to stop culling animals and instead to neuter and vaccinate them. But cull tactics continue.

Last month, the Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation (ACF), which has neutered more than 6,000 stray animals in Karachi in the past seven years, filed a petition in the Sindh High Court after hundreds of dogs the organisation had vaccinated and spayed were found dead. Many of the dogs were given poisoned food, the Foundation said, and were found with their legs tied to other dogs so they could not run away or seek help as the venom took effect.

The ACF petition, which is yet to be heard in court, is seeking a uniform policy by the government to curb the spread of rabies and contain rising stray populations in Sindh instead of sentencing dogs to death.

In Pakistan, the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act of 1890 was amended in January 2018 to include fines and punishments for animal abuse. The law does not provide a “holistic approach” towards animal welfare, rights activists say, and needs to be replaced with new legislation recognising animals as sentient beings that need protection and care.

Animal welfare advocates say Pakistan has never made a priority of pushing responsible animal control policies, including spaying and neutering, which would have helped avoid the current problems.

“Killing dogs is not only inhumane but ineffective also,” said Aftab Gauhar, a project manager at RFP, a project of Karachi’s Indus Hospital which operates across the city and has vaccinated nearly 24,000 dogs and neutered and spayed over 3,500 since 2018. She said rising dog populations and rabies infections could be tackled with sterilization, mass vaccination drives and community engagement to teach people how to behave around strays.

There are currently several charities in Karachi who cruise the city treating sick dogs and taking healthy ones to shelters for vaccinations and sterilizations before depositing them back exactly where they were found: on the streets.

Chundrigar, who founded ACF, said sterilization could lead to a 50 percent fall in the number of strays within a year.

“Stray dogs should be neutered and left to live in their natural habitats, which are the streets,” she said.

In an emotional video message posted online last month after hundreds of dogs were found dead, Chundrigar said: 

“We [ACF] are about to complete seven years next month. It has been a hard seven years. We feel grieved. We have no success to show. Because all of our success stories are dead.”


Drone, missile attack on Kyiv injures 21, officials say

Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

Drone, missile attack on Kyiv injures 21, officials say

A combined Russian missile and drone attack triggered fires in several districts of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv early on Thursday, injuring 21 people, officials said.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on Telegram, said six fires were reported in Sviatoshynskyi district west of the city center, causing serious damage. Twenty-one people were being treated in hospital, including three children.
Klitschko had earlier said residents of one dwelling were trapped under rubble.
Fires and incidents of falling metal fragments were reported in other areas.
In Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said seven missiles had struck a series of targets. Windows were smashed in a high-rise apartment building, but there was no word on casualties.
Within an hour, Terekhov also reported a drone attack on the city, though there was no indication of any casualties.


India downgrades ties with Pakistan after attack on Kashmir tourists kills 26

Updated 16 min 37 sec ago
Follow

India downgrades ties with Pakistan after attack on Kashmir tourists kills 26

  • New Delhi suspends key water sharing treaty, and closes only land border crossing
  • Pakistan prime ministers calls meeting Thursday to discuss response

SRINAGAR/NEW DELHI: India announced a raft of measures to downgrade its ties with Pakistan on Wednesday, a day after suspected militants killed 26 men at a tourist destination in Kashmir in the worst attack on civilians in the country in nearly two decades.
Diplomatic ties between the nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors were weak even before the latest measures were announced as Pakistan had expelled India’s envoy and not posted its own ambassador in New Delhi after India revoked the special status of Kashmir in 2019.
Pakistan had also halted its main train service to India and banned Indian films, seeking to exert diplomatic pressure.
Tuesday’s attack is seen as a setback to what Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party have projected as a major achievement in revoking the semi-autonomous status Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed and bringing peace and development to the long-troubled Muslim-majority region.

On Wednesday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told a media briefing that the cross-border involvement in the Kashmir attack was underscored at a special security cabinet meeting, prompting it to act against Pakistan.
He said New Delhi would immediately suspend the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty “until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.”
The treaty, mediated by the World Bank, split the Indus River and its tributaries between the neighbors and regulated the sharing of water. It had so far withstood even wars between the neighbors.
Pakistan is heavily dependent on water flowing downstream from this river system from Indian Kashmir for its hydropower and irrigation needs. Suspending the treaty would allow India to deny Pakistan its share of the waters.
India also closed the only open land border crossing point between the two countries and said that those who have crossed into India can return through the point before May 1.
With no direct flights operating between the two countries, the move severs all transport links between them.
Pakistani nationals will not be permitted to travel to India under special South Asian visas, all such existing visas were canceled and Pakistanis in India under such visas had 48 hours to leave, Misri said.
All defense advisers in the Pakistani mission in New Delhi were declared persona non grata and given a week to leave. India will pull out its own defense advisers in Pakistan and also reduce staff size at its mission in Islamabad to 30 from 55, Misri said.
“The CCS reviewed the overall security situation and directed all forces to maintain high vigil,” Misri, the most senior diplomat in the foreign ministry, said referring to the security cabinet.
“It resolved that the perpetrators of the attack will be brought to justice and their sponsors held to account...India will be unrelenting in the pursuit of those who have committed acts of terror, or conspired to make them possible,” he said.
There was no immediate response to the Indian announcement from Pakistan’s Foreign Office.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has called a meeting of the National Security Committee on Thursday morning to respond to the Indian government’s statement, Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar posted on X.

An Indian military helicopter is seen in flight as viewed from Baisaran, a day after tourist attack in Pahalgam, about 90 kilometers from Srinagar on April 23, 2025. (AFP)

Tourist boom
India’s response came a day after the attack in the Baisaran Valley in the Pahalgam area of the scenic, Himalayan federal territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The region has been at the heart of India-Pakistan animosity for decades and the site of multiple wars, insurgency and diplomatic standoffs.
The dead included 25 Indians and one Nepalese national and at least 17 people were also injured in the shooting that took place on Tuesday.
It was the worst attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai shootings, and shattered the relative calm in Kashmir, where tourism has boomed as an anti-India insurgency has waned in recent years.
A little-known militant group, the “Kashmir Resistance,” claimed responsibility for the attack in a social media message. It expressed discontent that more than 85,000 “outsiders” had been settled in the region, spurring a “demographic change.”
Indian security agencies say Kashmir Resistance, also known as The Resistance Front, is a front for Pakistan-based militant organizations such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen.
Pakistan denies accusations that it supports militant violence in Kashmir and says it only provides moral, political and diplomatic support to the insurgency there.
“We are concerned at the loss of tourists’ lives,” Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said in a statement earlier on Wednesday. “We extend our condolences to the near ones of the deceased and wish the injured a speedy recovery.”

Setback to Modi
In Kashmir, security forces rushed to the Pahalgam area and began combing the forests there in search of the attackers.
Police also released sketches of three of the four suspected attackers, who were dressed in traditional long shirts and loose trousers and one of them was wearing a bodycam, one security source said.

Indian soldiers search around Baisaran meadow as part of a manhunt on April 23, a day after gunmen massacred 26 tourists in the region's deadliest attack on civilians since 2000. (AFP)

There were about 1,000 tourists and about 300 local service providers and workers in the valley when the attack took place, he said.
On Wednesday, the federal territory shut down in protest against the attack on tourists, whose rising numbers have helped the local economy.
Protesters turned out in several locations shouting slogans such as “Stop killing innocents,” “Tourists are our lives,” “It is an attack on us.”
“I want to say to the people of the country that we are ashamed, Kashmir is ashamed,” former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti said. “We are standing with you in this time of crisis.”
Airlines were operating extra flights through Wednesday from Srinagar, the summer capital of the territory, as visitors were rushing out of the region, officials said.
Militant violence has afflicted Kashmir, claimed in full but ruled in part by both Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan, since the anti-Indian insurgency began in 1989. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, although violence has tapered off in recent years.
 


A dozen states sue the Trump administration to stop tariff policy

Updated 24 April 2025
Follow

A dozen states sue the Trump administration to stop tariff policy

  • The suit asks the court to declare the tariffs to be illegal, and to block government agencies

NEW YORK: A dozen states sued the Trump administration in the US Court of International Trade in New York on Wednesday to stop its tariff policy, saying it is unlawful and has brought chaos to the American economy.
The lawsuit said the policy put in place by President Donald Trump has left the national trade policy subject to Trump’s “whims rather than the sound exercise of lawful authority.”
It challenged Trump’s claim that he could arbitrarily impose tariffs based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The suit asks the court to declare the tariffs to be illegal, and to block government agencies and its officers from enforcing them.
A message sent to the Justice Department for comment was not immediately returned.
The states listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit were Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York and Vermont.
In a release, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes called Trump’s tariff scheme “insane.”
She said it was “not only economically reckless — it is illegal.”
The lawsuit maintained that only Congress has the power to impose tariffs and that the president can only invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act when an emergency presents an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad.
“By claiming the authority to impose immense and ever-changing tariffs on whatever goods entering the United States he chooses, for whatever reason he finds convenient to declare an emergency, the President has upended the constitutional order and brought chaos to the American economy,” the lawsuit said.
Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, sued the Trump administration in US District Court in the Northern District of California over the tariff policy, saying his state could lose billions of dollars in revenue as the largest importer in the country.
White House spokesperson Kush Desai responded to Newsom’s lawsuit, saying the Trump administration “remains committed to addressing this national emergency that’s decimating America’s industries and leaving our workers behind with every tool at our disposal, from tariffs to negotiations.”


Palestinian student remains detained in Vermont with a hearing set for next week

Updated 24 April 2025
Follow

Palestinian student remains detained in Vermont with a hearing set for next week

  • In court documents, the government argues that Mahdawi’s detention is a “constitutionally valid aspect of the deportation process”
  • Mahdawi is still scheduled for a hearing date in immigration court in Louisiana on May 1, his attorneys said

BURLINGTON, Vermont: A large crowd of supporters and advocates gathered outside a Vermont courthouse Wednesday to support a Palestinian man who led protests against the war in Gaza as a student at Columbia University and was arrested during an interview about finalizing his US citizenship.
Mohsen Mahdawi, a legal permanent resident for 10 years, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on April 14. He made an initial court appearance Wednesday during which a judge extended a temporary order keeping Mahdawi in Vermont and scheduled a hearing for next week.
Mahdawi’s lawyers say he was detained in retaliation for his speech advocating for Palestinian human rights.
“What the government provided thus far only establishes that the only basis they have to currently detaining him in the manner they did is his lawful speech,” attorney Luna Droubi said after the hearing. “We intend on being back in one week’s time to free Mohsen.”
In court documents, the government argues that Mahdawi’s detention is a “constitutionally valid aspect of the deportation process” and that district courts are barred from hearing challenges to how and when such proceedings are begun.
“District courts play no role in that process. Consequently, this Court lacks jurisdiction over Petitioner’s claims, which are all, at bottom, challenges to removal proceedings,” wrote Michael Drescher, Vermont’s acting US attorney.
According to his lawyers, Mahdawi had answered questions and signed a document that he was willing to defend the US Constitution and laws of the nation. They said masked ICE agents then entered the interview room, shackled Mahdawi, and put him in a car.
“What we’re seeing here is unprecedented where they are so hellbent on detaining students from good universities in our country,” attorney Cyrus Mehta said. “These are not hardened criminals. These are people who have not been charged with any crime, they have also not been charged under any of the other deportation provisions of the Immigration Act.”
Mahdawi is still scheduled for a hearing date in immigration court in Louisiana on May 1, his attorneys said. His notice to appear says he is removable under the Immigration and Nationality Act because the Secretary of State has determined his presence and activities “would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences and would compromise a compelling US foreign policy interest.”
Last month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting counter to national interests, including some who protested Israel’s war in Gaza and those who face criminal charges.
According to the court filing, Mahdawi was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank and moved to the United States in 2014. He recently completed coursework at Columbia and was expected to graduate in May before beginning a master’s degree program there in the fall.
As a student, Mahdawi was an outspoken critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and organized campus protests until March 2024.
US Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, a Democrat, met with Mahdaw i on Monday at the prison and posted a video account of their conversation on X. Mahdawi said he was “in good hands.” He said his work is centered on peacemaking and that his empathy extends beyond the Palestinian people to Jews and to the Israelis.
“I’m staying positive by reassuring myself in the ability of justice and the deep belief of democracy,” Mahdawi said in Welch’s video. “This is the reason I wanted to become a citizen of this country, because I believe in the principles of this country.”
Mahdawi’s attorney read a statement from him outside the courthouse Wednesday in which he urged supporters to “stay positive and believe in the inevitability of justice.”
“This hearing is part of the system of democracy, it prevents a tyrant from having unchecked power,” he wrote. “I am in prison, but I am not imprisoned.”
Meanwhile, the government is appealing a decision by a different Vermont judge who said another detained student, Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University, should be returned to Vermont.
On Tuesday, members of Congress from Massachusetts traveled to Louisiana to meet with Ozturk and Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil. US Sen. Ed Markey and US Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern expressed concern at a news conference Wednesday that the students, as well as other detainees, were being deprived of nutritious meals, sleep and blankets in the cold facilities.
Khalil and Ozturk have not committed any crimes, the delegation said — they are being unlawfully detained for exercising their right to free speech.
“They are being targeted and imprisoned because of their political views,” McGovern said.


Trump plans to exempt carmakers from some tariffs, FT reports

Updated 23 April 2025
Follow

Trump plans to exempt carmakers from some tariffs, FT reports

US President Donald Trump is planning to spare carmakers from some tariffs, The Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
Car parts would be exempted from tariffs that are being imposed on imports from China over fentanyl and tariffs levied on steel and aluminum, the report added.