VIGILANTES and police have killed hundreds of cats and dogs in the most gruesome manner as fears grow in China that pets could be spreading the Sars virus.

From Guangzhou in southern China, where the virus appeared, to Beijing, where thousands of people are infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome, pets have been strung up, buried alive, poisoned, thrown out of high-rise windows and beaten to death.

Some pet-owners have evacuated their cats and dogs, fearful that neighbours might seize and kill them. Others have asked vets to put down their pets humanely before a mob could catch them.

According to the World Health Organisation, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that pets have spread the virus, which is believed to have migrated from animals to human beings in the cramped farming communities outside Guangzhou, where many breeders share accommodation with their livestock.

The pet-killing spree illustrates how the Sars epidemic has led to mass hysteria in China, where government information on how to handle the virus lacks credibility, thanks to early obfuscation and denials.

Animal welfare organisations said that the killings of pets were not being carried out on the orders of officials, but in many cases police and local Sars investigators instigate or participate in the killings out of ignorance and fear of losing their jobs if Sars cases are found in their districts.

A videotape of one dog being killed was made available to The Times by animal welfare activists in the central city of Nanjing, where there was mass panic earlier this week when 10,000 people were quarantined after the discovery of a single case of Sars. In the videotape a crowd points out a dog at the end of a dark alley. Under the eye of police officers called by residents, one man attaches a rope to the dog’s collar and strings it up on the bars of a window frame next to a bicycle. A second man lifts a 4ft poll and lands several blows on the dog until it stops twitching.

Later the man can be seen wiping fresh blood off the pole. The mood of the mob watching the killing appears to shift from indignation and bloodlust to self-righteous satisfaction without a trace of shame after the killing.

Animal welfare has never been a priority in China, where dog meat is available in restaurants and many adults can remember years of starvation. But the present ill-will towards pets is more than an expression of a general unconcern about animals. The impotence that many Chinese feel in the fight against Sars has made them angry. Overnight, they have been told that an unknown virus has killed hundreds of people. Healthcare facilities are unable to cope while the death toll rises.

What little apparently reliable information that people do receive from the Government cannot be trusted, but since they cannot and do not want to challenge officials people direct their rage towards weaker creatures.

Jeff He, of the International Animal Welfare Foundation, said: “Chinese people can’t find an outlet for their fears, so they vent it at animals.”

Many Chinese people have objected strongly to killing pets, but they are powerless as mob rule has been given new legitimacy by the Sars emergency. Across China, irate and frightened villagers have barricaded their settlements to keep out Sars and urban residents have been allowed to bar outsiders from their high-rise compounds. A siege mentality has taken hold in many of these Sars fortresses, guarded day and night by volunteers.

In the Xicheng district of Beijing, a man found a dog in an apartment block and tried to kill it by throwing it out of a twelfth-floor window. When he saw that the dog had survived the fall, he ran downstairs, dug a hole and buried the whimpering creature alive.

The case was reported in a local newspaper and has alarmed many pet-owners. Wang Xiaojiang, a Beijing resident, has moved her two Pekinese, Meimei and Pangpang, as well as her 13-year-old mutt, Wawa. Ms Wang said: “I have apartments in both Beijing and Shenzhen. When Sars broke out, I took my pets away to Shenzhen, where they are safer.”

For those who do not have second homes, having the pet put down is the only escape. Yin Tieyuan, a vet in Beijing, said: “Every day we receive more than ten calls from people asking whether we could carry out mercy killing of their pets. The Chinese Government invested 20 years to change people’s thinking. With the efforts of many individuals and communities, the idea of loving animals was almost accepted. But in a very short time it’s all gone again.”

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