Execution by Dogs? May 26, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern , trackback
North Korea is a frequent source of joy for bizarrists: if not for the poor wretched put upon people who live there. For example, last month Beach wrote up the Indian custom of death by cannon, only to be trumped by Kim Jong-un who had just executed his minister of defence with an anti-aircraft gun. This got Beach thinking about a report from over a year ago now that the great leader had had his uncle executed by dogs.
Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po reported that Jang and his five closest aides were set upon by 120 hunting hounds which had been starved for five days. Kim and his brother Kim Jong Chol supervised the one-hour ordeal along with 300 other officials, according to Wen Wei Po. The newspaper added that Jang and other aides were ‘completely eaten up.’
As it happened this story probably wasn’t true: no one dared to rule it out completely that tells you an awful lot about the chubby Caligula of Pyongyang. North Korea has the perfect combination of (i) the most peculiar acts of barbarity and (ii) close to zero reliable information. Still, dogs, death, execution… Is it really possible that our ingenious ancestors did not somewhere institutionalize the whole ‘torn apart by dogs things’. Certainly they did in their fantasies: Actaeon was eaten up by dogs on the instructions of moody Artemis; Jezebel was ripped apart by dogs on the instruction of a prophet; in the Vision of Ezra a medieval work of apocrypha, we learn that God will have the wicked ripped to shreds by strays…
Beach has just found some odd, maverick episodes but again nothing customary. Take this one from the occupied Netherlands towards the end of the war (1944?). It is unpleasant.
A captured escapist was tied by the SS naked to a post, and three of these huge Dobermans (after four days of being starved) were turned loose on him while thousands of internees witnessed it all standing at attention. ‘Hans withstood the calves torn off, withstood the thighs torn off, withstood the guts (yes, guts) turned out. But he turned his head and vomited when the Dobermans had torn the lungs and heart out. The first thing the liberated internees did was to shoot the Dobermans and their horrid handler.
Another instance was the arrival of the Spanish at Quarequa in 1513 where dogs were set on some transvestite Indians as a first taste of Spanish civilization and a punishment for the suspicion of sodomy (picture at head of post and below).
Imagine the terror.
The only folk who seemed to have gone into the whole dog-rip thing a lot, however, were the Romans. They certainly hurled some of their criminals to the dogs in the amphitheater. There is, even, a reference in Suetonius to Domitian having an audience member, who had offended the Emperor, tossed into the sand with various toothy canines. Still a bit ad hoc.
Did systematic execution by dog exist anywhere: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
Remember there was death by elephant.
31 May 2015: DL writes ‘In a book, or perhaps an article, it was noted that one of the Spanish conquistadors searching for gold in South, or Central, America, brought along a pack of dogs. They were available for the times when rations were short, the hearty adventurers could survive on dog meat. In practice, certain Indian leaders were torn to pieces and eaten by the dogs if they could not give good directions to the nearest city of gold. The author noted that, in effect, this was cannibalism by proxy for the conquistadors.’
Was this Nuñez?
