An actress turned lawyer has offered an additional HK$100,000 (US$12,830) as reward for information on the whereabouts of two dogs allegedly put into bags and taken away from a Buddhist monastery in Hong Kong last week.
Mary Jean Reimer, known for previously detailing the alleged corruption of an abbess and sham Buddhist monks soliciting donations, announced her decision to double the reward money on her live-stream show on YouTube on Monday evening.
“I hope to find the whereabouts of the two dogs, ideally with them alive,” Reimer said. “If they have already died, it’s good to have closure. It’s better than organising searches that won’t bear fruit.”
Kent Luk Ka-jeep, founder of animal welfare organisation Paws Guardian Rescue Shelter, offered HK$100,000 of his personal funds on Monday to anyone who could supply information leading to the two dogs’ whereabouts.
Police arrested two male kitchen workers of the monastery, located on Lantau Island, on suspicion of animal cruelty on Saturday in connection with the alleged kidnapping and abandonment of the dogs.
The two dogs, known as “Dai Mui” and “Sai Mui”, which means “big sister” and “little sister” in Chinese, are brown-and-black mongrels.
A source familiar with the investigation said a woman supervisor of the monastery’s kitchen had been bitten by one of the dogs, leading to the decision to remove the pair from the monastery.
The monastery also published a notice on its Facebook page last Friday, saying it had received complaints accusing its staff of removing and abandoning two dogs from the “Ngong Ping area”.
The two mongrels were identified in the notice, but labelled as “strays”.
Reimer retired from acting in the 1980s, trained as a lawyer and returned to the public eye as a whistle-blower against corruption in Buddhist circles in the city.
Most notably, Reimer accused Sik Chi Ding, former abbess of Ting Wai Monastery in Tai Po, of mismanaging of funds and having two sham marriages with mainland Chinese monks in 2015.
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