Turkmen Pet-Owners Allege Poisoning Campaign

A rights activist in Turkmenistan has written to President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov urging him to halt the extermination of cats and dogs in the capital Ashgabat.

Officials have launched a campaign to exterminate vermin, but Natalia Shabunts and other residents allege that household pets are being deliberately poisoned as well.

Shabunts, who wrote to the president on May 4 calling for an end to the “barbaric massacre” of pets, said poisoned food was being placed outside the homes of pet-owners, whose addresses were known to the authorities through registration and rabies vaccination programmes, as well as in public parks where they walked their dogs.

She said the exterminators were acting on general instructions which Berdymuhammedov had issued to “clear the city of animals”.

There has been no official response to Shabunts’s complaint, but a housing department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that an extermination campaign was taking place in streets and basements, aimed at mice, rice, mats and insects.

Schoolteacher Selbi described how housing department officials left poisoned sausagemeat around apartment blocks, killing pet cats as well as stray dogs in a slow and agonising process.

Turkmenistan’s laws no longer prohibit cruelty to animals, after the ban was lifted in 1997.

In one earlier campaign while the late Saparmurat Niazov was still president, meat laced with poison or glass was dispersed around homes near his palace.

A museum worker in Ashgabat accused officials of failing to discriminate between pets and strays.

“Public officials continue the deliberate, incessant and systematic killing of pets,” she said, adding that she was afraid to take her dog outside for fear it would be poisoned.

This article was produced as part of News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.

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