Moscow Mayor bans bullfight

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW: Moscow city authorities banned what was to become Russia's first ever bullfight, bowing to a wave of public protests from animal rights defenders. The Moscow City Government initially allowed the Portuguese corrida in which, in contrast to Spanish corrida, the bull is not killed. However, on Monday the Mayor of Moscow, Mr. Yuri Luzhkov, banned the event saying any form of corrida is ``a demonstration of violence''. The ban came barely two weeks before the show and at the peak of an anti- corrida campaign mounted for months by different groups ranging from the Russian Orthodox Church to animal rights activists and famous actors. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Alexy II, condemned the idea of holding a bullfight in Moscow as cruel and alien to Russian culture. The French film star and animal rights campaigner, Ms. Brigitte Bardot, wrote to the Moscow Mayor urging him ``not to associate Moscow with these degrading circus games''. Supporters of the show dismissed the protests as misplaced and hypocritical. They argued that organisers had taken precautions to render bullfighting even more harmless than in traditional Portuguese corrida (the picture shows the matador, Mr. Davila Miura, being gored by a bull during a corrida in Bilbao, Spain, on Sunday. It was not known how serious the injury was).

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Section  : International
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