Babes kill bunnies, just for kicks

Source:Global Times Published: 2010-12-9 8:38:00


Crush videos are reportedly sold to foreign websites for as much as 6,000 yuan, according to the Xinhua News Agency. Photo: Courtesy of Peacock King

By Lin Meilian

A pretty young woman places a rabbit on a table.

One hand holding its body, she nails the struggling animal to a wooden board.

She steps up onto the table and then crushes its head under her high heels.

The rabbit screams.

The woman smiles as blood oozes from the animal's head.

Then she speaks English: " Baby I'm sorry but I must do this to you."

Produced, circulated and sold by a group of Chinese crush fetishists, animal snuff has once again sparked online outrage across the country. 

Like the famous kitten-stomping antics of Heilongjiang Province nurse Wang Jue in 2006, the rabbit videos are widely circulated on the Internet and reportedly sold to fetishists in search of a sexual thrill.

Crush fetishists savor seeing insects, reptiles and mammals squeezed out of shape, with many achieving sexual gratification from watching a woman torture animals to death.

Making crush films in China - a country without law against animal cruelty - is a lucrative business.

As the market for crush films grows on the Chinese mainland, some fetishists have reportedly sold video clips to foreign websites for as much as 6,000 yuan ($900), according to the Xinhua News Agency.

In response, outraged Internet users launched the "human flesh search engine" to hunt down and punish those who crush animals and those who pay them for it.

It all began on November 14 with a post about uncovering secrets behind girls killing rabbit videos on Tianya.cn, one of the most popular Internet forums in China. The post attracted more than 13 million clicks within days.

An animal lover who identified himself as Kongquemingwang, literally "Peacock King", posted the story that exposed the scandal.

"I just wanted to expose the senseless killing and stop them from enrolling new girls," he told the Global Times.

"But I didn't want the girls to be hunted and get hurt. Some are just university students."

He first spotted the interest group when he found a Chinese mainland online instant messenger QQ group titled "crushing animals films for sale" on one animal website early last year.

 


This shocking crush video has been deleted from websites mop.com and 56.com after a protest from the Animals Asia Foundation. Photo: Courtesy of Peacock King

Four years on & still no  law

He suspected this might be the same group identified with the graphic Wang Jue video where she killed a cat with her high heels. He decided to join up and find out what was going on.

"I was asked what was my hobby, so I said 'same as yours,' then they let me in," he said. He used the same method to access the other seven QQ groups.

According to Peacock King, these groups ran websites like fetishcn.info and alifootclub.com, both now defunct due to media exposure.

These websites used to be available two to three hours a night, selling crush films and VIP memberships while barring animal rights activists from peeking.

He pretended to be a buyer and chatted with sellers. They gave him a menu of "products." Prices varied depending on the way they performed and the length of the videos.

He paid about 300 yuan to buy a 15-minute video in which a young woman squashed baby mice under her golden high heels. They also gave him other short crush clips for free and introduced some foreign crush fetishist websites as an extra service.

"I later found out they copied the performance from foreign crush fetishists' websites as Asian people rarely make such films," he said.

"It's not only murdering and torturing animals, it's an extension of S&M [sadomasochism]."

Such clips are sold to crush fetish websites such as xxxfetish-media.com and nicheclips.com where sexy women crush insects and shellfish in online videos retailing for $6-10, he explained.

Once a paid-up member, Peacock King guesses a catalog is made available that includes cruelty toward other kinds of animals.

"The reason why you can't see girl-killing-small animal videos on their website is because animal cruelty is illegal in their home countries," he said.

Girls who perform crushing are called "queens" and are popular and worshiped by crush fetishists, according to the chat record provided by Peacock King.

"Queen, I love your feet and your high heels," one fan commented. "They are the combination of beauty and cruelty. It's so beautiful to watch it dying under your feet."

 

Guo Yang, former founder of crushword.net, was quoted as saying that being a crush queen is a high-income profession, generally starting at 3,000 yuan a month.

Peacock King befriended a queen, a 19-year-old university student lured by the money.

"She told me her boyfriend introduced her to the crush fetish as he loves licking her feet," he said. "Then she soon became an abuser and a star inside the group."

He said he didn't want to expose the girl's identity as he believes he can talk her out of it. Other queens weren't so lucky. One queen exposed by Internet users had to call police for help.

After the video came to light, Internet users found one queen who put a glass plate over a rabbit and sat on it till it was crushed to death in a video.

Her name is said to be "Huang Xiaoxiao," a university student from Sichuan Province.

According to a report by the Sichuan-based West China City Daily, Huang is a rich, nice woman who likes English and small animals.

She was first hired to step on fruits as a part-time job. Then she switched to fish, insects and small animals.

Her then boss reportedly threatened her if she quit, he would expose her on the Internet.

The pay was not as much as was rumored, Huang said. She got 100 yuan for crushing fruit and 200-400 yuan for stepping or crushing animals.

Her boss gave up on her after she vomited from the crushing of a fish, she said, with her last performance in 2008.

Days after the video was exposed, Huang received a call from her mother, telling her that her performance had gone public. Huang said she felt like the sky had fallen and everything was lost.

"This must be my punishment," she said. She reportedly cried the whole day, and then confessed to her husband in the evening.

"I suggested divorce, but my husband said we should get through the hard times together."

She even thought of killing herself, but her cats have helped her to get through the difficult time. She released an apology on November 25.

"I can never forget what I have done," Huang wrote. "It has become a stain on my life that I can never wipe away. Will God forgive me? I don't know.

"God gave me the punishment I deserve … I'm willing to use the rest of my life to make up for this mistake, to atone for my sin."

Her apology fostered even greater argument, with many questioning her sincerity.

Internet users accused Huang of crocodile tears designed to elicit sympathy.

Peacock King is one of the many who doesn't believe Huang.

"If you read it carefully, you'll notice it's pretty much the same apology as the kitty killer used before."

A man claiming to be Huang's high school classmate filed a report with the Chengdu Niuwangmiao police station on behalf of Huang to investigate animal abuse. Police said they would investigate: even though China has no law against cruelty to animals.

 

Complaint embarrasses websites

Animals Asia Foundation (AAF) wrote a letter to websites mop.com and 56.com on November 23, asking them to delete crush videos and not provide a platform to producers of such images.

"These videos show images of animal cruelty which in addition to causing severe animal suffering have a negative psychological impact upon the people viewing them and could lead to people copying these acts and causing further suffering to animals and people," it said.

In response, mop.com launched an online campaign against animal abuse, setting up three QQ groups and deleting all its crush videos.

A group of animal rights activist and experts gathered in Beijing for an emergency meeting to discuss crushing on November 27.

Chang Jiwen, who chaired the board to draft what was hoped to be China's first animal protection law last year, called for urgent legislation to end animal cruelty. "It's hard for an individual or grass-roots organization to stop animals from being abused," he said. "It's time for the passage of an animal protection law."

Maggie Chen, a cruelty caseworker for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said they had received "tons of complaints" since the crush video came to light.

"We think the Chinese government should arrest and punish all the people involved and abolish the animal abuse group," she said.

She suggested those involved could be charged with a public order offence and argued the people who made and sold such videos had violated the Administration of Internet Information Services Measures.



Posted in: In-Depth

blog comments powered by Disqus