As frequent visitors to the beautiful island of Bali and long-time Bali residents, we are very distressed by the ongoing situation of street dogs (and personally owned pets) being poisoned or stolen. We understand that there are no laws against poisoning street dogs. There are several organizations (Yayasan Yudisthira Swarga. Yasasan B.A.W.A and The Bali Street Dog Fund, Australia) that desex street dogs to reduce the overall dog population responsibly, so there is no good reason to allow these dogs to be poisoned. It is shocking for Balinese and foreign people to find their pets poisoned and suffering a horrible death, and this is often also witnessed by tourists.
We read an article in an Australian newspaper (Friday, November 30, 2007, Herald Sun), stating that the Government has a clean-up campaign to kill street dogs around Nusa Dua where the Climate Control Conference is being held to spare visitors the sight of these dogs. If true, we feel this is inhumane, and most of the Conference visitors would be horrified to learn about it. Leaving potassium cyanide in the streets where animals, birds and children could find it is surely an environmental hazard! We do not believe that the Indonesian Government would poison dogs, but we do know that some hotel owners, shop keepers and food stalls do commit this unacceptable practice, without thinking that children might also be harmed.
We ask the Governments of Bali and Indonesia to address this problem immediately by introducing laws to stop this unacceptable activity. We also ask the Governments of Bali and Indonesia to introduce basic animal welfare rights as in other countries. All animals should have the right not to be harmed and it would reflect well on Indonesia if laws were in place to prevent people being from ill-treating or killing them. Many Balinese care for their dogs and are heartbroken when they are stolen for food or poisoned.
There are well-known food stalls in Bali (some called RW warungs) that specifically sell dog meat. Much of this meat is from street dogs that were killed by poisoning with potassium cyanide. Also, many street dogs have been injected with a medicine called Ivermectin to control skin disease, which can cause serious health problems in humans if the dog meat is eaten. In fact, people have become gravely ill and even died after eating dog meat.
We the undersigned urge you to create and enforce laws that ban the poisoning of any dogs and the stealing of companion animals.
