This is just brutal.
Dozens of people in Turbaco, Columbia have brought attention to the countries treatment of animals after a video surfaced of a mob killing a bull with machetes, rocks, knives and sticks during a festival.
The killing took place during a ‘corraleja’, a kind of amateur bullfight held in some towns in the South American country. Anyone is allowed to take part.
The video footage, shot from the stands of a large bullring, shows dozens of have-a-go toreros taunting and chasing the bull, flashing makeshift capes in front of its face to confuse and infuriate it.
Soon it is exhausted and injured and unable to move any longer. But unlike the traditional bullfight, here there is no swift kill with a sword aimed directly at the heart.
Instead the animal is surrounded by dozens of baying youths who pelt it with stones and bottles, kick it and even, according to reports, cut it with machetes. Some even jump on its body.
Public Defender Jorge Otarola called the images ‘Dante-esque, painful and inhumane’.
‘The state’s intervention is needed because, even though traditions should be respected, they must be updated to reduce the suffering of animals,’ he told The Associated Press.
Colombia’s Environment Minister Gabriel Vallejo also intervened. He told Colombia’s Blu Radio: ‘I have to say it is totally barbaric, where people with sticks, stones and knives, and with utter cruelty, kill the bull.’