Animal lovers seeing red over bullfight ring

• Source: Global Times
• [01:57 January 27 2010]
• Comments

Protest planned

The new project in Huairou faces similar challenges.

On November 17, the International Movement Against Bullfights (IMAB) launched an online campaign calling on Chinese authorities to stop what the group called a "barbarity."

"We must at all cost prevent this project from going ahead. Otherwise we will have another country with bullfights," the group declared.

They posted emails to Chinese journalists and to official websites, asking people to send protest letters. Thoughtfully, a sample protest letter was provided.

"The Chinese authorities may have been flooded with emails from all over the world,"

Maria Lopes, coordinator of IMAB, told the Global Times Tuesday.

Animal rights activists in China have taken their own actions.

Li Xiaoxi, a professor at the Air Force Command Institute and a former member of CPPCC Beijing, helped block Daxing's plan to build a bullring. Li told the Global Times that she and other members of CPPCC Beijing are now working to block the latest project.

"We found out that local officers have different opinions on this project," Li said. "I don't understand why they still want to have a bullring when even some places in Spain are considering banning it."

She first learned of the project from other animal rights activists on the Internet and immediately contacted local officers to complain.

"They turned a deaf ear to me, so I keep calling, calling and calling them," she said.

According to EFE's report, about 100 cows and 100 bulls are awaiting shipment to China in January so that matadors would be fighting bulls bred in China.

Li said she feels anxiety over bulls, because more bulls will enable the bullfight promoters to build other bullrings in other cities.