24th April, OIPA’s volunteers take to the streets, along with many other animal welfare associations, to express their non-violent disagreement against the circus arrived in the city, which uses animals during its shows. A pacific garrison to shout aloud the necessity to stop this incredible abuse which goes on since immemorial times.
The animals in circuses spend their entire lives travelling around the world and this causes them much stress. They are kept in narrow spaces and have to perform in front of a public many times per day. Animals are not there because they want to be, and they do not perform because they enjoy it. Riding bicycles, standing on their heads, balancing on balls, or jumping through rings of fire are all behaviour impossible to find in nature. To force them to perform these confusing and physically uncomfortable tricks, trainers use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bullhooks, and other painful tools. Animals in the circus are deprived of all the things that they would experience in their natural habitats.
The city councillor reported: «We are really proud to have been able to put together so many different realities in so little time […] I have presented motions, interrogations, asked documents, required controls, and I do not intend to stop, neither do the citizens and the associations that are attending me in this difficult journey. Today, the place has given a clear message: our fight is a civil battle […]».
During the demonstration, held in piazza Roma (Arengario), OIPA’s volunteers raised the flag of animal’s rights against this circus, which exploit animals for entertainment, and symbolically against all circuses across the world that bereave all types of animals from their lifestyle, dispossessing them from their natural habitat and, de facto, abusing the ones who need more protection.
