Seremban dog-shooting incident: Reports lodged against council

Seremban dog-shooting incident: Reports lodged against council
19 Jul 2006
By Devinder Singh


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KUALA LUMPUR: Three police reports were lodged against the Seremban Municipal Council yesterday over the shooting of 13 dogs on June 29.

The reports — from the owner, his sister and animal lovers — urged police to investigate the council’s enforcement officers for their alleged cruelty to the animals.

The owner of the dogs, Ng Her Sun, said the barbaric way in which his dogs were killed had no place in a civilised country like Malaysia.

"We are civilised people and we should act civilised," he said outside the Brickfields police station where the reports were lodged.

"My dogs hid under the bed, they were frightened. The officers were cruel."

Ng, 57, and his sister, Choon Mong, 56, lodged separate reports.

Lawyer N. Surendran also lodged a report on behalf of the Coalition Against Dog Shooting and Other Inhumane Methods (CASIM), urging police to investigate all cases of cruelty to animals by enforcement authorities.

Surendran said shooting of dogs was illegal and the proper way to put the animals down was by injection.

"Not only did they shoot the dogs, they also trespassed on private property and discharged firearms in a residential area," he said.

"To shoot the animals in that manner amounts to cruelty."

Surendran said action could be taken against the enforcement officers and the director of enforcement under Section 44 of the Animals Act 1953 and Section 428 of the Penal Code.

"We expect the enforcement officers to prevent cruelty to animals but here the opposite happened," he said.

CASIM is a coalition made up of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Malaysian Association for Responsible Pet Ownership, Bivai Special Dogs Selangor, Malaysian Animal-Assisted Therapy for the Disabled and Elderly Association, Malaysia Against Death Penalty and Torture, and Paws.

On June 29, a team of MPS enforcement officers entered Ng’s house and shot 13 of his dogs.

Ng, an odd-job worker, lived with his sister and 26 dogs in the house.

The council had said that they had issued Ng numerous warnings to remove the dogs but they were ignored.

The council had also claimed that the dogs attacked several enforcement officers who went to the house to have them removed.