An annual bull running festival in Huancavelica in Peru’s Cusco province went badly wrong when the animals began charging spectators and running into nearby food stands.
At least eight people were injured as onlookers ran for cover.
People tried to assist those who had been hurt as bulls tossed men into the air and against nearby vehicles.
The event, where bulls are released into an open field, is part of a four-day religious festival held to celebrate New Year.
The bullfighting industry organises about 540 bullfights a year in Peru, mostly in the departments of Cajamarca, Lima, and Ancash. This figure is more than any other country in Latin America.A TIMELY intervention by the Supreme Court to stay the hasty executive decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government removing bulls from the list of animals “that shall not be exhibited or trained as performing animal” has effectively prevented the brutality that bulls are subjected to in the name of “jallikattu”, a bull-taming feudal sport conducted during the Pongal/Sankranthi festival, mainly in southern and central Tamil Nadu.
On January 12, the court stayed the Government Order (G.O), issued by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change on January 7, 2016, which ran counter to the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment of May 7, 2014, banning all forms of bull-related sport events across the country, such as jallikattu in Tamil Nadu and bullock-cart races in Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka and Gujarat. The court termed such sport as an “inhuman practice”.
The G.O. lifting the ban on jallikattu, just ahead of the Pongal festivities at the commencement of the Tamil month of “Thai”, stated that bulls “may continue to be exhibited or trained as a performing animal at events such as jallikattu in Tamil Nadu and bullock-cart races in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala and Gujarat in the manner [specified] by the customs of any community or practised traditionally under the customs as a part of culture in any part of the country”.
