Dozens of dogs have been rescued in raids by police and animal rights organisations in Uganda as they were discovered to have been kept in sham shelters. These shelters used the dogs for social media scams, in which the owners depicted the dogs in distress to claim hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of donations from dog lovers across the globe.
One suspect was arrested during the raids, which targeted three shelters, with two more at large. Owen Godfrey Membe has pleaded not guilty to a charge of animal cruelty. He’s accused of “killing an animal in an unnecessarily cruel manner.” The dogs of Membe’s shelter are remaining there, but the building is now controlled by the Animal Welfare Alliance Uganda, an organisation which takes aim at organised animal exploitation, made up of local and international activists, as well as qualified veternarians.
A new location has been set up for an emergency shelter, where the dogs are set to be received. The exploitation of the dogs was discovered from a BBC report exposing scammers in Mityana, who used money gained from filming dogs in distress to fund luxury lifestyles.
Dogs had been intentionally harmed for content, and left with injuries to ensure they could still be used for content. “This case is the first arrest after the world has seen how this scam has developed into an online content creator’s scamming business,” said Bart Kakooza, vice-chairperson of the Animal Welfare Alliance Uganda. “The entire world is now watching to see how Uganda will bring these cases to justice and how these animals will be given a new chance at life lived without cruelty.”
