Protesters disrupt UNIQLO's store opening in Manila

Two unidentified women, apparently foreigners, made a scene at the opening of Japanese retail clothing brand UNIQLO’s first store in the Philippines, shouting that the company should stop mistreating sheep. “Stop mulesing!” one of the women repeatedly cried.   “Stop using sheep!” the other woman shouted. Animal rights activists around the world have been protesting the brand’s supposed use of Australian wool from mulesed sheep.    According to a blog on the website of animal rights group PETA, mulesing is a process of cutting off chunks of skin and flesh from the backsides of lambs to prevent the flystrike condition, when flies lay eggs in the fold of the animals’ skin.   Security personnel dragged them out of the event at the SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City. One of the women was Caucasian, the other Asian.    Katsumi Kubota, chief operating officer of Fast Retailing Ltd., declined to give any reaction about the incident.   “I do not have any comment at this moment, but we have been talking with them. One thing’s for sure, we have been communicating with them,” Kubota told GMA News Online.

  Fast Retailing is the holding company that operates UNIQLO stores worldwide.   The same protesters attended the UNIQLO press conference on Wednesday, shouting the same slogans.   “In other parts of the world, we’ve had protests, but we want to look into that fact and we want to make a judgment based on that fact,” Kubota said in another interview on Wednesday. —AMANDA LAGO/VS, GMA News