ANIMAL rights campaigners have called on the council to severe their twinning links with a Romanian city where dogs are believed to have been abused.
They claim to have witnessed hundreds of dogs being abused in Galati, where they are kept in a public shelter.
An online petition with more than 8,000 signatures will be sent to Lord Mayor Hazel Noonan while emails have been fired off to council chiefs calling on Coventry to axe its status as a twin city.
The council said the twinning was no longer active but it remained proud of its link with Galati.
But Alison Standbridge, founder of charity Paws2Rescue, said they should be ashamed.
“For Coventry to be ‘proud of our association with Galati’ is shocking,” she told us.
“Proud to be associated with a town that keeps its dogs in such appalling conditions?
“There are over 1,000 broken dogs in the public shelter, who are living in the most inhumane conditions, without adequate food and medical care, living condemned to death, and many kicked and beaten.”
She added: “My response to Coventry Council would be the world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those that look on and do nothing.”
Her charity has paid for new enclosures to be built in a bid to rescue the dogs with some given homes in the UK.
A council spokesman said: “These reports clearly concern us, however, as an EU country Romania is covered by the same European laws as Britain and should also have domestic laws relating to animal welfare.”
He added: “Coventry set up many twinning links following the Second World War including the one made with Galati in Romania. While we are proud of our association with Galati, it is one of a number of our twins that we no longer have an active association with.
“We concentrate on a small number of active twins which we maintain as part of an international strategy for the benefit of Coventry people.”
