/ 1 January 2002

Pets being tortured on Zimbabwe farms

Settlers on formerly white-owned farms in Zimbabwe have been accused of torturing pets left behind by fleeing owners, a privately-owned paper said Sunday.

”Pets are being beaten, tortured, and mutilated in acts of recrimination,” the Standard quoted the president of the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), Fred O’Regan, as saying.

O’Regan told the paper that a pet pony had recently had its hoof ”chopped off as a warning to the owner never to return to his farm.”

The chief inspector of the Zimbabwe National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ZNSPCA), Meryl Harrison, told AFP that 27 dogs were poisoned last week in the Bromley area, just outside the capital Harare.

She said that police blamed the poisonings on a gang of criminals operating from the capital.

The dogs were all from farms that the government has said it will acquire under its land reform programme. – Sapa-AFP