Rights campaigners call for Pizza
to be permanently returned to birthplace saying shopping centre conditions
unsuitable
Reuters in Beijing
Monday 14 November 2016
09.34 GMT Last modified on Monday 14 November 2016 23.45 GMT
Animal rights groups have called
for the permanent return home of “the saddest polar bear in the world”, who
will be temporarily moved from a shopping mall aquarium in southern China during
an upgrade.
The three-year-old female bear,
named Pizza, has
become a focus of global attention since Hong Kong-based Animal
Asia posted in July an online video of the bear lying on her side in a glass enclosure
in Guangzhou.
“Pizza the polar bear will
temporarily leave Guangzhou and return to her birthplace,” the Grandview Mall
Aquarium said on its account on the social media platform WeChat.
The move was part of ongoing
upgrades and “minor alterations” to the mall and the aquarium would remain open
during Pizza’s absence, the aquarium said on Sunday.
It did not say when Pizza, who
has become known as “the saddest polar bear in the world”, was expected to
return from her temporary stay at the zoo in the north-eastern city of Tianjin
where she was born.
Animal right groups have called
for her stay to be made permanent, saying conditions in the mall were
unsuitable.
Sending Pizza back to the mall
would be “cruel and heartlxess”, Peter Li, a campaigner at Humane Society
International, said. “No amount of renovation could ever make a shopping mall a
suitable place for this animal.”
In October, HSI and three Chinese
animal rights groups called for the mall to be closed, saying footage of
Pizza’s pacing and head-swaying behaviour were evidence of mental decline.
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