Nayib Bukele, the self-declared “world’s coolest dictator,” will mark six years as El Salvador’s president on Sunday, a period defined by contentious reforms, which critics say have brought peace to the streets at an incredibly high price.

His iron-fisted crackdown on crime in the country, that was once the most violent nation in the western hemisphere, led to the arrest and detention of around 87,000 people, often with little due process.

The government has defended the move, pointing to significant reductions in gang violence nationwide, but opponents say it has come at the cost of mass incarceration and the erosion of civil liberties.

The dragnet expanded as time wore on to include civil society groups and journalists investigating official collusion with the country’s gangs, critics say.

On May 19, Ruth López, an anti-corruption lawyer for the human rights group Cristosal, who is also a prominent critic of Bukele, was detained by Salvadoran authorities for allegedly stealing “funds from state coffers.” However, López still has not been charged with a crime despite remaining in detention.

Soon after Lopez was arrested, Bukele’s government passed a law taxing foreign donations to NGOs like Cristosal at 30%, which rights groups have described as an existential threat.

“What we have seen is a massive concentration of power in (Bukele’s) hands,” Juan Pappier, deputy director for Latin America at Human Rights Watch, said of Bukele’s six years in power. Bukele’s rule has been “based on demolition of the checks and balances of democracy and increasing efforts to silence and intimidate critics.”

The reduction of gang-related crime in El Salvador has made Bukele popular in the Central American nation, so much so that he was reelected in a landslide victory last year, even though the country’s constitution had barred anyone standing for a second term. (Bukele’s allies in Congress eventually replaced the Supreme Court’s top justices with judges willing to interpret the constitution in his favor.)

Since March 2022, the country has been under a “state of exception,” allowing the suspension of numerous constitutional rights. In the capital San Salvador, many people say they now feel safe walking through neighborhoods once considered dangerous. Though they acknowledge the country has seen a massive increase in incarcerations and a suspension of rights, Bukele’s supporters believe the resulting peace and security has been worth the tradeoff.

Not everyone agrees.

Samuel Ramírez, founder of the Movement of Victims of the Regime (MOVIR), a human rights group that works with families of people believed to have been detained without due process, says thousands have been arrested over unfounded suspicions of being linked to gangs.

Bukele has previously admitted that some innocent people have been detained by mistake but said that several thousand have already been released.

Ramírez and other activists believe that many are too afraid to speak publicly.

“Here we see soldiers armed to the teeth in the streets, the police, even armored trucks in the streets — tanks. That’s synonymous with a country at war,” he said. “The gangs, for me, have already been neutralized. And now the war is against the people, so they don’t demonstrate, don’t speak out.”

Alleged back door dealings

Though he presents himself as a law-and-order leader, Bukele has long faced allegations that he negotiated the peaceful security situation in El Salvador through back-door dealings with the gangs.

In 2021, the Biden administration accused Bukele’s regime of bribing MS-13 and Barrio 18, two of the most notorious gangs in El Salvador, to “ensure that incidents of gang violence and the number of confirmed homicides remained low.” Alleged payoffs included cash, cell phones and prostitutes for imprisoned capos.

Bukele promptly denied the allegations, calling them an “obvious lie.”

But four years later, independent newsroom El Faro published an explosive interview with two self-styled gang leaders from Barrio 18 who claimed that, in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, they had intimidated voters into casting their ballots for Bukele during his 2015 bid for mayor of San Salvador.

The two men gang leaders also claimed that when he became president in 2019, Bukele had arranged that the most powerful gangs in El Salvador refrain from wanton murder and extortion, lest they make him look bad, El Faro reported.

Bukele has not yet responded publicly to their allegations, but obliquely referenced the reporting from El Faro in a post on May 10, sarcastically implying the only “pact” he made with the gang leaders involved putting them in prison.

The journalists from El Faro who broke the story fled the country before it was published, anticipating arrest.

He said seven of the publication’s journalists are facing arrest warrants for reporting on the alleged deals. Even so, he said the newspaper would continue its journalistic work. For the past two years, the publication has been running most of its operations in exile from Costa Rica.

“If there was any semblance of democracy left in El Salvador, it was in independent journalism,” said Noah Bullock, executive director of Cristosal.

‘We are under a dictatorship’

Last week, Bukele’s government passed a law taxing foreign donations to NGOs at 30%.

He had proposed a similar law in 2021, but it didn’t pass. In any case, Bullock says that it’s irrelevant whether any law is proposed, passed or tabled in El Salvador: after six years of virtually unfettered power, Bukele is a law in and of himself.

She said the law will make it impossible for them to continue working. It gives them three months to renew their registration as an NGO, but they don’t know how the process will work.

Grande’s assessment of the situation is unambiguous: “Right now, we can say very openly that we are under a dictatorship.”

Despite the growing outrage from rights groups, Bukele’s punishing penal system has won him fans.

US President Donald Trump has praised the crackdown and cut a deal with Bukele, who agreed to hold hundreds of Venezuelan deportees in El Salvador’s Center for Terrorism Confinement, alongside thousands of detained Salvadorans.

Known as Cecot, the mega-prison is considered the largest penitentiary in the Americas and is notorious for the spartan conditions, which rights organizations have denounced as inhumane.

“I think what is happening here is a kind of laboratory for what could happen in other countries,” NGO worker Grande warned. “Even the United States.”

During Trump’s April meeting with Bukele at the White House, Bukele suggested the US president follow his lead when it comes to mass detentions.

“Mr. President, you have 350 million people to liberate, you know,” Bukele said of the US population. “But to liberate 350 million people, you have to imprison some. You know, that’s the way it works, right?”

At least 26 Palestinians have been killed after Israeli forces opened fire on Sunday near a southern Gaza aid distribution center run by a controversial US-backed foundation, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.

“Crowds of citizens headed to receive food aid” from a site in the Rafah area, when Israeli forces opened fire, said a paramedic from the PRCS, the only medical professionals present in the area.

The GHF is a private organization backed by Israel and the United States. It was set up amid Israeli accusations that Hamas is stealing aid in Gaza and selling it for profit. Humanitarian organizations say there is no evidence of this, and Israel hasn’t presented any evidence publicly.

United Nations aid agencies have criticized the GHF’s aid mechanism, saying it violates humanitarian principles and raises the risks for Palestinians.

UN aid groups, such as UNRWA, typically check identification and rely on a database of registered families when distributing aid.

But the GHF is not screening Palestinians at aid distribution sites, despite Israeli officials saying that additional security measures were a core reason for the creation of the new program.

Criticism has been mounting against both Israel and the GHF after chaos broke out last week when tens of thousands of starving Palestinians arrived at two new food distribution sites.

According to Palestinian Ministry of Health figures from before Sunday’s incident, 11 people have been killed and dozens injured since the aid distribution sites have opened. The GHF said on Thursday that no one has been killed or injured since the distribution of aid began last week.

The statement added that it has provided more than 4.7 million meals in six days, including delivering 16 truckloads of food on Sunday morning, providing over 887,000 meals.

In a statement issued Sunday, the GHF said it will “continue scaling, with plans to build additional sites across Gaza, including in the northern region, in the weeks ahead.”

Aid was distributed “without incident,” read the statement, with the group adding it was “aware of rumors being actively fomented by Hamas suggesting deaths and injuries today.”

However, a mixed picture appears on the ground with claims of the aid distributed believed to be inaccurate.

The GHF also claims the reports of “deaths, mass injuries and chaos” at its sites are “false.”

“They are untrue and fabricated,” the statement continued.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

At least 111 people were confirmed dead in central Nigeria on Friday after floods submerged the market town of Mokwa in the country’s Niger State following torrential rains, officials said.

The heavy rains lasted for several hours Thursday, and media reports quoting local government officials said a dam collapse in a nearby town had worsened the situation. The flooding displaced large amounts of people, the reports said.

Rescuers continued to find more bodies into the afternoon Friday. Earlier reports said 88 people had died, but then at least 23 more bodies were found, Niger State emergency agency spokesman IIbrahim Audu Husseinit told The Associated Press in the afternoon.

That brought the toll to 111, but that could go higher as the search continued.

“More bodies have just been brought and are yet to be counted, but we have at least 111 confirmed already,” Husseini told AP by telephone.

Mokwa, about 220 kilometers (140 miles) west of Abuja, is a major meeting point where traders from the south buy food from growers in the north.

In a similar occurrence last September, torrential rains and a dam collapse in Nigeria’s northeastern Maiduguri caused severe flooding, leaving at least 30 people dead and displacing millions, worsening the humanitarian crisis caused by the Boko Haram insurgency.

Nigeria often faces seasonal floods, particularly impacting communities such as Mokwa along the banks of the Niger and Benue Rivers. Communities in the far north of the country, which experience prolonged dry spells worsened by climate change, also see excessive rainfall that leads to severe flooding during their brief wet season.

In videos and photos shared on social media platforms, floodwaters cover neighborhoods where homes are fully or partially submerged, with rooftops barely visible above the brown currents. Residents are also seen waist-deep in water, appearing to salvage what they can carry or rescue others.

The chairman of Mokwa local government area, Jibril Muregi, suggested that poor infrastructure worsened the impact of the flood. He appealed to the government to start “long overdue” construction of waterways in Mokwa under a climate resilience project.

The embattled Israeli-backed aid group that began operating in Gaza earlier this week is not screening Palestinians at aid distribution sites, despite Israeli officials saying that additional security measures were a core reason for the creation of the new program.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is operating in the strip with US and Israeli approval, was established amid Israeli accusations that Hamas is stealing aid in Gaza and profiting off its sale. Humanitarian organizations have said there is no evidence tying significant diversion of aid to Hamas, and Israel has presented none publicly. But it is those claims that have prompted Israel to seek to replace traditional humanitarian organizations with GHF, which they said would prevent Hamas from obtaining the aid.

Yet GHF appears to have fewer safeguards in place to ensure aid reaches those in need than United Nations aid organizations, like UNRWA, which typically does check identification and relies on a database of registered families when distributing aid.

When asked if GHF would check identification in the future, the spokesperson called the situation “fluid” and said GHF would continuously “reassess the situation.”

GHF’s operations do include more militarized security around their distribution sites and truck convoys entering Gaza. Armed American security contractors have secured GHF aid trucks entering Gaza, reducing the risk of those trucks being seized or looted while en route.

The lack of screenings raises questions about how GHF will be more effective at preventing the diversion of aid than the UN agencies which have supplied the overwhelming majority of aid to Gaza during the war and which have refused to participate in the new GHF-run mechanism due to concerns about a lack of independence and heightened risks for Palestinians.

GHF said in a recent statement that it would establish a “secure, transparent system to deliver aid directly and effectively – without diversion or delay.”

But Palestinians at the site said diversion of aid is already underway.

“The Americans opened the doors for us and whoever wants can get in and take what they need,” Bilal Hawadri said, referring to American security contractors. “Some stood in the line, but then people started stealing.”

Another man, Yousef Shallouf, said he saw “gangsters” pay individuals to “go get aid boxes,” which they would then resell.

Such actions would be more difficult under the UN-administered systems. During much of the war, UNRWA – the primary provider of aid in Gaza – has distributed aid based on its database of families in Gaza.

Recipients are asked to bring identification and once a family representative has collected aid, they are ticked off a list, according to an UNRWA spokesperson.

Israeli officials have recently forced the UN to alter that system, requiring recent distributions to take place at bakeries and kitchens where mass distribution, rather than a per-household system, takes place.

The UN’s aid agencies have refused to participate in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s aid mechanism, saying it violates humanitarian principles and raises the risks for Palestinians. UN officials have only ramped up their criticism this week, amid chaotic scenes near the distribution points and killings near the sites.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has said that 11 Palestinians were killed this week near the GHF distribution points, amid Israeli gunfire directed at crowds of people near the sites.

Earlier in the week, thousands of hungry Palestinians overran one of the distribution points, prompting American security contractors to withdraw from the site.

GHF says it has distributed more than 23,000 boxes of food aid this week, totaling more than 2 million meals.

“Despite the emergency intensity and kinetic environment surrounding our operations, the fact is our assistance efforts are helping Gazans,” GHF’s interim executive director John Acree said in a statement Friday. “But this is just the beginning. Our commitment to safely and effectively supplying food directly to a large, hungry population is unwavering, and we look forward to continuing to scale and strengthen on our initial undertakings to help meet the basic food security needs of the people in Gaza.”

A family of raccoons recently broke into an Airbus factory in Canada, adding an unusual headache to the planemaker’s more familiar troubles with parts shortages and supply chain snags.

Five of the baby mammals were found inside the plant near Montreal, which produces A220 airliners, sources told Reuters, after their mother was spotted climbing the landing gear of a jet being produced for a European airline.

“A guy came face to face with the raccoon, after having entered the plane,” a factory worker said.

A second source said damage included urine and chewed wires.

Workers on the overstretched assembly line had to be pulled off normal jobs to undertake the time-consuming task of quarantining the first jet and inspecting for damage from the furry intruders, which are known for foraging in trash cans for food.

Airbus confirmed the discovery of a family of raccoons on one plane but declined to say whether they had further delayed production or caused any damage.

“The aircraft is pursuing its assembly process,” a spokesperson said, adding measures had been put in place to ensure safety and quality.

While the incident is only a temporary headache, it comes as Airbus is scrambling to speed up production, having warned airlines that it faces another three years of delivery delays as it works through a backlog of supply-chain problems.

Recent snags include missing engines, late arrivals of components and delayed interiors, Airbus has said. But rarely have its contingency plans had to deal with stray omnivores at the rural plant.

“We had to open everything back up to inspect,” explained the second source.

Airbus said the animals had been removed to a safe location.

Editor’s Note: This story contains graphic images and descriptions of violence.

Every night after returning home from work, Chen opens his laptop and switches to his secret life as an undercover activist.

From his bedroom in eastern China, he spends hours witnessing scenes too graphic for a horror movie and trying to befriend people who would be his sworn enemies in real life.

Chen – a pseudonym to protect his real identity – is part of a team of internet sleuths whose mission is to shut down a shadowy global network that mutilates and kills cats for profit.

“It’s become a pretty international phenomenon,” said Jenny Edwards, a criminologist and specialist in animal sexual abuse, based in Seattle. “It is happening much more often than people realize.”

Activists say many of the cat torturers are based in China, where there are no laws against animal cruelty. Protected by an apparent culture of impunity, they make videos for consumers around the world – including in the United States, UK, Turkey and Japan.

Undercover with the cat torturers

The chat groups provide a snapshot of an underworld where torture is trivialized and celebrated as if it’s part of a video game.

A culture of competition has also developed among members to suggest the most inventive style of abuse – while creating heroes out of the perpetrators.

Chen was in similar groups. For years, he’s been watching gruesome videos and befriending torturers to gather enough information to track them down.

He’s part of an alliance of activists called Feline Guardians, who hope that drawing attention to the issue will pressure law enforcement globally to take more action – particularly in China.

“China is now experiencing a wave of cat abuse, from elementary school students all the way to the elderly participating in it,” Chen said.

Chen says the number of people involved in Chinese-based networks is “growing larger and larger,” and include foreigners outside the country.

Data gathered by Feline Guardians showed a 500% increase in new torture videos added to the Chinese Telegram groups they monitor between June 2024 and February 2025 – with a new video being uploaded on average around every 2.5 hours. In the first two months of this year, more than 500 new torture videos have been uploaded, with most coming from previously unknown abusers.

‘They are treated like celebrities’

More than 5,000 miles away from Chen in London, Feline Guardians activist Lara has been monitoring the global spread of this content.

“It starts off in China, and then you have people who mimic these videos from elsewhere, (and) we have children who are exposed to this,” said Lara, who asked to only use her first name to avoid online retribution.

When Lara first learned about the trade in cat torture, she said her reaction was “surely this must be embellished.” But very quickly, she had her eyes opened to the extent of this dark subculture.

“They are treated like celebrities,” Lara said. “So, there is a drive with not only being able to get the satisfaction of torturing horrifically cats, but also the feedback and the notoriety that they receive.”

Lara and Chen, along with their fellow activists, keep in constant contact despite most of them having day jobs – often staying up all night across different time zones as they try to track down the torturers.

Their detective work involves combing through every frame of the footage, examining the background for clues on location or identity, and trying to glean information from their bank details if they are selling their content online.

“Through repeatedly watching it, we can roughly determine some details about their life,” Chen said. “(Then) we can conduct some investigations locally.”

When they think they are closing the net, they also conduct interviews with local people and neighbors, in case they witnessed or overheard anything that could be used as evidence.

Chen often poses as a zoosadist, who is trying to buy torture material, to gain the trust of fellow members. But some groups also demand complicity as their entry criteria.

“Most core groups require recording a video that volunteers can’t do – that is, taking a cat from being full of life and torturing it to death,” Chen said.

Still, in the past few years, he has managed to delve so deep within Chinese torture networks that he’s exposed the identities of more than a dozen perpetrators.

Torture to order

Entering the disturbing world of these networks exposes an entire subculture with its own terminology and hierarchical structure.

Once inside dedicated chat rooms, creators were also sometimes called “cat deleters” or “masters” and the consumers who paid for the videos were known as “sponsors.”

Collectively, they appear to view themselves as vigilantes who aim to get rid of all “evil cats” – possibly also to provide a falsified sense of justification for their crimes.

The creators even advertise specific cats for “torture to order” which enables buyers to select the animal, the tools and tactics of their death – all for a price.

Promotional posters are shared showing a photo, name and age of the cat, along with their “shelf life,” indicating the date they plan to kill them. The “sponsors” are urged to “contact customer service” to receive a quote.

“There is a sadistic and twisted mindset for these torturers where they try to elongate the torture as long as possible,” said Lara.

“These videos show cats being burnt alive, they have been liquefied in blenders,” Lara said. “There have been cases of cats being dismembered and their guts being pulled out and stretched.”

The suffering of the animals is also turned into searchable terms – including “T-Rex” for cats that have had their front legs cut off and can only stand on their back legs.

A ‘fetish I can’t quit’

A Chinese consumer who regularly pays for this sort of gratuitously violent content admits that it gives him a sexual thrill.

A married man in his mid-twenties, Zhang said he first started watching animal torture videos when he was a teenager, after he saw a report about it on the news.

“It’s just this fetish that I can’t quit,” Zhang said. “This is much harder to quit than cigarettes.”

So far, Zhang has spent thousands of dollars buying cat torture videos through the networks, which can cost from a few dollars to $50 each.

He added that his wife “doesn’t know about this thing,” and would likely divorce him if she did.

Zhang says he can’t afford to order the custom videos that are set at a much higher price, often over $1,300. But he says the other members are usually “rich people,” who he claims include officials, programmers and managers, some of whom share WeChat IDs showing their name, company or government department.

Zhang says in the outside world, he is “quite normal” and would never personally hurt an animal – and even keeps rescued cats and dogs as pets at home.

But he admits that he enjoys watching women torture cats, especially if they crush them with high heels.

Criminologist Jenny Edwards says the “primary driver” of this fetish is sadism – a “sexual deviance” which is “getting sexual arousal from watching these (videos) or feeling the pain of discomfort and humiliation of seeing another being suffering.”

“It’s part of antisocial, psychopathic behavior,” Edwards added.

She says zoosadists often hide their proclivities from their families and friends.

“They are leading a double life, because they have this whole other life that they completely keep separate from everything else that they’re doing,” Edwards said.

Some have threatened physical violence against activists who try to expose their secret lives.

Phaedra, a US-based independent animal rights activist who asked to go only by her first name, said she was doxxed – the process of revealing someone’s real identity – and targeted by anonymous accounts, after highlighting graphic torture content on X to prompt censors to take them down.

Phaedra says she also tried to alert Chinese and US officials.

As revenge, some of the abusers used Phaedra’s photograph from her X account to create deepfake pornography of her – and one even used a photo of her as a child alongside dead cats and a sign that read “I’m coming for you Phaedra.”

“They’ve said that they’ll come and skin my dog, they’re going to kill my pets and family,” Phaedra said.

In December 2024, she also received death and rape threats via X.

At one point, she was terrified – thinking they’d find out where she lived and come through her bedroom window – but added that she’s “not afraid of them anymore.”

Chen, the undercover volunteer, said most people he encounters in the groups are lonely men who feel left behind by society, which suggests they are also searching for connection within these groups – bonded by their unspeakable hobby.

He described them as “incels” – involuntary celibates – who feel rejected by women and therefore get sexual pleasure from hurting an animal that most women love.

Activists say some consumers are also drawn to this content because the screams of a cat sound similar to those of women, or children – prompting fears that the behaviors in this online underworld could develop into the abuse of humans.

“They’re becoming more elaborate with what they’re doing, and far more methodical,” Lara from Feline Guardians said. “This will only get worse.”

For example, Chen said in 2024, a sickening mission emerged to target an app called “Street Cat,” which livestreams stray cats or those in shelters for cat enthusiasts to watch.

In the US, Feline Guardians also found evidence of a crossover between cat torture and neo-Nazi groups, including one private Telegram group called “The Eternal Reich” with more than 600 members, which mixed torture content with videos of abuse against women and posts on far-right ideology.

One member posted a photo of himself holding two dead cats in front of an American flag.

A fantasy through cats

Social media companies have come under pressure for not doing enough to prevent the proliferation of this sort of extreme, and in most places, illegal content.

“The platforms are social media networks, mainly end-to-end encrypted platforms such as Telegram,” Lara said. “Also, these videos are being shared on other social media platforms like X, Instagram and Facebook.”

Often potential consumers are recruited directly by the torture rings via a direct message.

If they have commented on a graphic video on YouTube or Facebook, they might receive an invitation to free-to-join Telegram groups with thousands of members. Those who want more depraved content, or want to order something specific, can join smaller, more extreme Telegram groups.

“It definitely needs to be restricted, and a lot of it can and should be restricted by the social media provider,” Edwards said. “The challenge is we don’t have a cohesive way of attacking it.”

Edwards said in most countries legislation is too weak and inadequate to fit the extent of these crimes, and that law enforcement should be pushing tech companies to do more.

“Content that promotes or glorifies violence is explicitly forbidden,” a Telegram spokesperson said, and “any groups, channels or users found distributing violent content are immediately banned.” Hundreds of moderators using AI tools are removing “millions of pieces of harmful content each day,” the spokesperson said.

In China – which has some of the world’s most tightly-controlled internet restrictions – censors rarely remove any cat torture content, Chen said.

“In most situations there is no supervision of this,” Chen said. “China’s censorship of political content and pornography is very strict, but with animal abuse, basically no threshold has been set.”

Multiple cases of cat abuse in China have been reported by state media in the past few years, but most alleged that the perpetrators did not face any legal consequences.

Other countries with animal cruelty legislation have made multiple arrests of cat torturers in recent years – including the US, Canada and Turkey.

In the UK, two teenagers were recently charged with causing animal suffering, after a pair of kittens were found dead and mutilated in north-west London on May 3. The local police also wrote a letter to schools in the area, warning them of an increase in reports of young people committing acts of cruelty towards animals.

In Turkey – which is known for its abundance of street cats – five members of a cat torture network were arrested in January 2024 for “abusing cats and engaging in organizational propaganda.” More arrests were made in February and September last year, including one for “torture of a kitten.”

“In Turkey, within these groups, there are up to 15,000 members, possibly even more,” Lara said. “So these networks are spreading, and they mimic what the same networks in China have been doing.”

Activists say the role of legislation and enforcement is critical to shutting these networks down. High-profile cases in recent years include a monkey torture ring originating in Indonesia which was exposed and dismantled in 2023. British man Adam Britton was also jailed in August 2024 for torturing and sexually abusing dozens of dogs in Australia and sharing the videos on Telegram.

Peter Li, an associate professor of East Asian politics at the University of Houston-Downtown and a China policy specialist for Humane Society International, says China is the only major industrialized country that does not have comprehensive anti-cruelty laws.

“It’s time that China adopts an anti-cruelty law,” Li said, though he conceded that it was “a politically challenging issue.”

Li said multiple proposals have been submitted over the past two decades to China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, but they have never progressed – partly due to fears they could impede the farming industry, and due to a cultural lack of concern for animal welfare among China’s older generation.

But with the growing number of pets in China – totalling more than 120 million in urban areas alone – the pressure to legislate for the protection of animals, especially from younger pet owners, will likely only increase.

Beyond the suffering of animals, Li says there are also “broad social consequences” for allowing this trend to spiral. “You would encourage copycat behaviors,” Li said. “Most of the audience are young people, and (they) would be desensitized.”

In 2024, Chinese state media reported at least four separate cases of university students allegedly torturing cats.

China Daily, the country’s official English-language newspaper, reported in May that “incidents of students being punished for torturing animals have been on the rise.”

The article said the alleged offenders had been punished, but didn’t specify what punishment they’d received, beyond at least two expulsions.

“Simply expelling the students cannot solve the problem,” Wang Wenda, director of students’ psychological health at Xinhua College of Ningxia University, was quoted as saying. “They might not only hurt animals but also people if they do not get proper guidance and help.”

Links between cruelty to animals and to humans – documented by multiple global studies – could ultimately drive law enforcement in China – and elsewhere – to take the issue more seriously.

“It starts off with cat torture,” said Lara. “There have been multiple cases of people who go off to commit other crimes, such as serial killers, but also those that we don’t hear of – abuse within the home (and) maybe children.”

“There is a crossover here, and so they’re just acting out a fantasy through cats.”

For campaigners, there’s no choice but to keep going, despite the huge impact on their own mental health.

“It’s definitely changed the way that I view the world,” said Lara. “I believe that I have taken on something which I am committed to for the rest of my life, until this changes.”

On May 18, Lara helped to organize global protests calling for an end to cat torture, held in more than 20 major cities around the world.

Chen said he had sought medical support for his mental health, but he’ll keep logging on every night because each sickening video takes him closer to a potential arrest.

He said he’ll watching in the hope of ending the depravity, because “someone has to do it, right?”

Madalena Araújo, Isil Sariyuce contributed reporting

Story Editors: Hilary Whiteman, Jerome Taylor

Video: Vina Salazar, Alex Dicker, Dan Hodge, Martin Bourke, Kevin Broad

Data and Graphics Editor: Lou Robinson

Illustration and Motion Designer: Alberto Mier

Visual Editor: Mark Oliver

Unveiling their latest seizure in front of news cameras last month, two Chinese customs agents revealed not drugs or weapons – but suitcases full of plush toys.

The stash on display included dozens of Pop Mart Labubus – the toothy, fluffy figurines that have sparked buying frenzies around the world, and in some cases, brawls among fans outside shops selling them.

“It’s almost impossible to get a Labubu via the official channels,” she said.

Fans are instead turning to unusual sources – including buying from smugglers.

Details and footage of one seizure were posted by China’s Customs Administration on social media, which stated that that the toys were intended “for profit by resale” and seized in accordance with law.

The post did not say whether any of the Labubu smugglers faced other legal consequences.

Labubu is the brainchild of Hong Kong-born illustrator Kasing Lung, and it has quietly built a loyal following since its 2015 debut.

But in recent months, the bunny-bodied, elf-faced creature — equal parts grotesque and adorable — has soared in popularity. Stars including Rihanna, Dua Lipa, and Lisa from K-pop group Blackpink have worn Labubus like lucky charms, and the toys were even spotted at Paris Fashion Week this year.

According to Chinese state-owned media outlet Cover News, a blind box from the latest Labubu 3.0 series, originally priced at 584 yuan ($81), has been selling for between 1,000 ($139) and 2,000 yuan ($278) on the second-hand market.

Pop Mart’s annual results show that the company’s global gross profit surged by over 125% last year, while its revenue in mainland China reached more than $1.09 billion, 34% higher than 2023.

“Because they are not available on official platforms, if you’re in a rush to get a gift for a friend, you just can’t manage to get the popular ones in time,” said Yang.

“You can only pay extra to buy from resale platforms.”