2006
© Jérôme Lescure
STOP ! the bullfight is not a fate!
Actions
Diary of the demonstrations
Propaganda in favour of bull-fights in Macif
Our right to answer
"Toro de la Vega": a descent into hell !
Segolène Royal : "Bullfights are magnificent spectacles"

Committees
Carcassonne
Montpellier

The Commissions

Youth Protection
Concerning Child Protection
UNICEF : Arles classed "Friend to Children" Town
Ethics and History
Barbarity and Nationalism

Culture and Media
Really glad! Guy Carlier: France Inter/7,55a.m. Monday, November 3rd 2006

Propaganda in favour of bull-fights in Macif
Our right to answer

MACIF Tandem n°16 - May 2006, page 32

The worst of all from our point of view is not so much that individuals relish misdemeanours like cruelty and serious maltreatment of animals but that apparently clever people flatter them in the press, on the radio or on television.
For this is the vicious point.
To put it clearly: adrift human behaviour has always existed. However, it is generally condemned-fortunately so-... except for people who promote bull-fights.

Even worse: this adrift behaviour is encouraged, exalted and those who indulge in this drift are presented to the world like peaks of virtue.
What a funny paradox!

Let's put it clearly: bull-fights and mutualism naturally exclude each other.
For, let us not be mistaken: there is no mutual help and even less compassion in the ritual slaughters in bull-fights.
Lately, on June 1st, on air with France Inter a bull-fight reporter said: "Yes, the bull suffers, yes, he dies an ugly death!" Well, this is settled!

Who would one want to make believe that the supporters of abject proceedings are at the same time perfect humanists?
Who could nowadays seriously acknowledge such a dichotomy?
And yet, all this is nothing compared to this: "bull-fight schools"!
Terrible name that hides the learning of torturing animals by young, even very young children. This is where young consciences get conditioned and formatted. The aim is to deprive the young who are enrolled to the benefit of an in disputable barbarity of their brains and consciences. This is certainly the most condemnable act of all.

However, there is a little light of hope: over 80% of the French say they are hostile to bull-fights. A first step towards a change in mentality and a necessary evolution of consciences.

For FLAC
The President
Ms Josyane Querelle

PACMA video
cassette of the demonstration of September 10, 2006
Please sign the online petition to help put an end to this atrocity.
"Toro de la Vega":
a descent into hell !

Tordesillas (Province of Valladolid, Spain), a district of 8400 inhabitants, is regrettably notorious for a barbaric practice of another age which takes place there every year.
Precisely another age, since the "Toro de la Vega" is a tradition dating back to a time believed to be that of the middle-ages.
It has to do with a rite - half festive, half religious - which consists in releasing a bull to a blood-thirsty crowd which pierces it with spears and finishes it off in conditions as atrocious as they are vile. Of course, the genitals of the bull are then cut off as a trophy !
André Viard, a bullfight columnist, informs us that the bull at least has a chance to survive if it reaches a certain line. But he adds that this hasn't happened for a very long time, thus reassuring torture fanatics.
For the religious aspect, this slaughter is carried out for the feast day of the Virgin Mary. How many crimes and massacres have been perpetuated in her name ?!
Fortunately, an ever more important opposition has begun (mostly from Spanish youth).
For years, without respite, this opposition has made foreign public opinion sensitive to this practice and has organized mail campaigns directed to the authorities concerned. For the time being, unsuccessfully, since barbarity still has more rights in this place than reason.
However, in 2005, another strategy was undertaken which undoubtedly made the villagers aware that the civilized world refuses this horror. A demonstration was organized by the opponents in the streets of Tordesillas. Through the impetus of the PACMA (Spanish Party for the Protection of Animals and Against Bullfights) and of many associations, both Spanish and French (of which the FLAC, as a federation, totally supports the Spanish activists), a second demonstration was organized for September 10, 2006, in one of the squares of the village.
The generous objective of these demonstrations is to succeed in preventing this cruel exhibition.
For the moment this remains highly improbable: on one hand, permission to demonstrate is accorded only for the preceding days, not for the day of the event, and on the other hand, the demonstrators would have to be several thousand strong, if not a hundred thousand, to confront the villagers, since a confrontation would undoubtedly be inevitable.

Some 500 to 800 people took part on September 10 (it's difficult to have reliable figures), among them three from France: Betty Loiseau, Isabel Marcoux and Dominique Joron. This remains poor for the French participation. The Spanish need our help to put an end to their barbaric traditions, just as we need theirs to abolish bullfights. Only by exchanging and combining our efforts will be achieve in making the world a better place.
Setting forth from Barcelona in the evening, we crossed the north of Spain by bus during the night, reaching Valladolid early in the morning and joining forces there with other activists who were also arriving by bus from all of Spain. It was thus a procession of more than ten buses that advanced towards Tordesillas. I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that each and every one of us started having a lump in his or her throat. The road descended toward the entrance of the village. What we saw there frightened us. A dense crowd, without a doubt hundreds of villagers armed with clubs and stick, awaited us, shouting loudly. The buses stopped for an instant, then continued on their way, passing in front of this hateful crowd throwing eggs and tomatoes, and finally parked a bit further on, where another group of villagers, much less numerous, awaited us.
After a short moment of wavering, a procession formed, led by PACMA, and advanced toward one of the village squares, under police protection. It should be noted that they were heavily equipped (similar to our riot squads) in case of an outbreak of violence. Without them we would definitely have been attacked: the hatred toward us seemed very intense and apparently the whole village had risen up against us.
It was a static demonstration: on one side the villagers, on the other the demonstrators, separated by a no-man's land protected on both sides by a line of police.
From one side insults, gross gestures, objects thrown; from the other, slogans chanted with conviction, signs held high with force. Speeches were made and as a grand finale (and a moment of intense emotion), a plane trailing in its wake a banner denouncing this ignominious practice flew at a low altitude back and forth over this cursed town.
We returned to our buses, tired from all the tension, relieved that no unfortunate incident had occurred but horrified at the thought of what was awaiting the bull on Tuesday the 12th of September 2006 !
In any case the struggle continues. We approached the figure of a thousand participants in 2006. There will have to be tens of thousands next year (2007), since it is intolerable that this tradition should last indefinitely.
DJ




Read also the action of the Montpellier Committee:
Segolène Royal : "Bullfights are magnificent spectacles"

For the attention of:
Madame Ségolène Royal
President of the Poitou-Charente Region

Agde, November 18th, 2006

Madame President,

It's been ten years!
Yes, in fact it was ten years ago that the publication of one of your articles in the newspaper "Le Monde" on the 31st of May 1996 raised an outcry from opponents to bullfights.

Referring to the torera Christina Sanchez, you wrote that she "aroused the enthusiasm of the public" and added: "One might wonder if women will not soon be more numerous in confronting bulls than in entering the political arena, that's to say the benches of the National Assembly".

And a bit further on: "While Christina Sanchez has a right to the feminine form " torera", women in the French Parliament are as yet denied the feminine form for deputy Of course we understood that you had found an example that seemed very appropriate, especially since bullfighting was in the spotlights of a vast campaign of propaganda in the media and in politics.

Although Christina Sanchez has since then put her instruments of torture in the closet, you seem rather to have forgotten the response you gave us at that time, writing that you hadn't intended to support bullfighting, of which you were "neither a spectator, nor an admirer". Quite a reassuring statement!

However, according to the newspaper "La Provence" (Monday, November 6th, 2006), which relates your visit to a ranch near Le Grau du Roi on Saturday, November 4th, you apparently declared: "Bullfights are magnificent spectacles. I can understand the passion of their enthusiasts".

Please allow us to inform you that bullfights are not at all "magnificent spectacles"! They are nothing but bloody exhibitions in which all values are reversed and where the torturer is made into a hero!

If there is something we cannot understand, it's the enthusiasm aroused by this type of practice, which exacerbates the most vile urges in people and encourages human baseness.

Therefore, we ask you to revise your position without delay and to have the courage to say, alongside those citizens who are struggling against this kind of abject and illegitimate violence, that bullfighting is nothing but a reprehensible activity. By doing so, you would help humanity to make a considerable step forward on the path to wisdom and civilization.

We might add that the inhabitants of the South of France are not all fanatics of torture. If you take the trouble to consult the various opinion polls we have carried out in several places, you will observe that they all reveal that, fortunately, more than 80% of French citizens express their hostility to this ignominious practice.

To conclude, we reiterate our request for a revision of your position, and thank you in advance for the attention you will kindly accord to our demand for the permanent abolition of bullfights on French and European soil.

Please accept our respectful, although saddened, greetings.

For the FLAC
The President in office
Josyane Querelle