They roam the streets of Bucharest, sad-eyed, scraggly mongrels that
shelter in demolition sites, rifle through garbage — and increasingly
attack humans. The capital's massive stray dog population, a legacy of
communism and its aftermath, can have lethal consequences: In recent
years, a Bucharest woman was killed by a pack of strays, and a Japanese
tourist died after a stray severed an artery in his leg.
Now, after a 4-year-old boy was fatally mauled last week, the city wants
to take action. The controversial plan that has divided Bucharest? To
capture and kill Bucharest's tens of thousands of strays, blamed for
dozens of attacks every day that need medical treatment. Animal lovers
and dog-wary citizens are at such loggerheads that the city has called a
referendum next month on whether to go forward.
"We will do what Bucharest's people want, exactly what they want," Mayor
Sorin Oprescu said last week in announcing the Oct. 6 referendum.
The stray dog population of this city of 2 million rose rapidly as the
city expanded into once rural areas after communism ended in 1989. The
Matei Bals hospital which handles infectious diseases has treated 9,760
people for dog bites in the first eight months of the year, of which a
quarter were children, according to spokesman Catalin Apostolescu. It
was the death of the 4-year-old boy playing with his older brother in a
park that sparked a new impassioned debate over putting down strays.
A day after the fatal attack, President Traian Basescu, a vocal
supporter of stray dog euthanasia, called on the government of Prime
Minister Victor Ponta to pass a law that would allow for stray dogs to
be killed. "Humans are above dogs," Ponta said.
Hundreds have demonstrated both for and against the measure and have
vowed to continue rallying in coming days. The current law only allows
the killing of stray dogs that are sick. Animal welfare group Vier
Pfoten says the city has 40,000 stray dogs, while City Hall claims there
are 64,000 strays. No figures are available for the end of the
communist era, but Bucharest residents remember the stray population
exploding after the Soviet collapse.
"We want a civilized capital, we don't want a jungle," said Adina Suiu, a
27-year-old hairdresser. "I will vote for them to be euthanized. I
drive a car most of the time, but when I walk around my neighborhood, I
am always looking over my shoulder. If we don't stop them now, we will
be taken over by dogs."
Vier Pfoten counters that the solution isn't killing strays but
sterilizing them. The group has sterilized 10,400 dogs in Bucharest
since 2001 — but says the problem needs to be tackled on a mass scale
that is beyond the capacity of animal welfare groups.
"We sterilize one, and five more are born in the same time," said Livia
Campoeru, a spokeswoman for the organization. "We need mass
sterilizations."
Basescu, who says he is an animal lover, has adopted three stray dogs —
and urges others to do the same. But he says that strays that aren't
taken in should be put down.
The controversy has reached such a fever pitch that Brigitte Bardot, the
French screen siren-turned-outspoken animal rights activist, has
stepped into the debate. "I am extremely shocked to find that revenge,
which has no place here, will be taken on all the dogs in Romania, even
the gentle ones," Bardot said in an open letter to Basescu, published on
her foundation's site.
Bucharest has historically had a thriving stray dog population. The
problem became acute in the communist era when former Communist leader
Nicolae Ceausescu razed large swaths of the city and residents were
forcibly moved into high-rise apartment buildings.
"When the great demolitions came, many houses were knocked down and
owners moved to apartments and could not take dogs with them," Campoeru
said. "People are irresponsible, they abandon their dogs, and there is a
natural multiplication."
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