PETA Members Protest Against Animal Cruelty!

PETA members covered in bandages while lying in hospital beds under a banner that reads, "Jallikattu: Harmful to Humans and Animals", two "injured" members of People for the Ethical Treatament of Animals (PETA) India will protest against the cruel and often deadly spectacle of jallikattu in Chennai on Thursday, at the Mahatma Gandhi Statue (opposite police headquarters), Marina Beach, Chennai. A third PETA member in a bull costume, also in bandages, will protest while sitting in a wheelchair between them. 

Their point? That jallikattu – in which terrified bulls are kicked, punched, jumped on, dragged to the ground and otherwise tormented – is in flagrant violation of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, and harmful to human participants and spectators. 

Because attempts to regulate jallikattu have failed profoundly, PETA has filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the Tamil Nadu Regulation of Jallikattu Act No 27 of 2009, a state law that permits Jallikattu: 

"The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, clearly prohibits causing suffering to any animal, and state law cannot supersede national law", says PETA India campaign coordinator Bhuvaneshwari Gupta. "Until jallikattu is banned, bulls will continue to be tormented, and people will continue to be injured and killed."

Despite claims that regulations would reduce cruelty to animals – and even though the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act prohibits beating, kicking, torturing or otherwise inflicting pain and suffering on an animal – PETA's investigation into five jallikattu events in January 2011 revealed that abuse is still taking place. 

Terrified bulls are painfully dragged by nose ropes, surrounded by mobs of taunting people who send the animals into a frenzy, goaded by sticks, pushed and wrestled to the ground and pulled in different directions by ropes. At jallikattu events this year, hundreds of human participants have been injured, and many have been killed. In one four-day period in January 2011, 215 people sustained injuries during jallikattu events, 154 of whom were spectators. Two people died.