PETA Urges Mayor of Seville to Ban Children From Attending Bullfights
20.05.2024
Seville – After learning that bullfighting management company Pages is promoting free tickets to children under 8 years old in a desperate attempt to attract more onlookers to the barbaric slaughter of bulls at Seville’s Maestranza, PETA sent a letter to Mayor of Seville José Luis Sanz Ruiz, urging him to introduce legislation barring children from witnessing cruel bullfights.
“The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has made clear that children should be protected from witnessing all forms of violence, including the tormenting and killing of bulls,” says PETA Vice President for Europe Mimi Bekhechi. “As unscrupulous businesses are preying on young people, PETA is urging the mayor to keep them safe by banning children from attending bullfights and calling on everyone else to stay far away from these bloody and archaic spectacles.”
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child – whose convention has been ratified by Spain – recognises the impact that witnessing violence against animals can have on children and has stated, “Children must be protected from all forms of physical and psychological violence and from exposure to violence, such as domestic violence or violence inflicted on animals.”
PETA’s letter highlights that watching animals being killed for human entertainment can leave impressionable young people profoundly disturbed, desensitise them to animal suffering, and teach them that the lives of others are not valuable and that it is acceptable – even enjoyable – to inflict pain and torment on others.
In a typical bullfight, assailants on horses drive lances into a bull’s back and neck before others plunge banderillas into his back, inflicting acute pain and impairing his range of motion. Eventually, when the bull becomes weak from blood loss, a matador appears and attempts to kill the animal by plunging a sword into his lungs or, if that fails, cutting his spinal cord with a knife.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Sascha Camilli +44 (0) 20 7923 6244; [email protected]
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