Children in danger..!!!
In France, regardless of their age, children can attend bullfights or go to a bullfighting school. Yet this violent spectacle has undeniable consequences on a child’s mental balance. Like many doctors, psychiatrists and educationalists, One Voice is demanding an immediate ban on bullfighting for children under 16.
French law does not protect children against the long-term consequences of bullfighting on their “full emotional, intellectual and moral maturity”. At the age of 6, or even younger, a child can attend this barbaric spectacle as long as they are accompanied by an adult. In bullfighting schools, children, often 8 and 9 years of age, learn how to torture when they are not fighting in the arenas, putting their lives in danger, like this young Franco-Mexican bullfighter, Michelito, who is barely 11 years old. Like certain films, which children under 12, 16 or 18 are banned from seeing, bullfighting is a violent spectacle from which children must be protected.
- Traumatic effects :
Some children at a bullfight may be affected by certain scenes and may not talk about it as the adults with them will deny that there is anything traumatic about this spectacle, claiming that it combines art, tradition and culture.
- Accustomed to violence :
whether they want to or not, the adults who take children to bullfights train them in a very crude, real and non-make believe form of violence.
- Fragile morals :
It seems difficult to teach our children in schools and in the home that violence is to be condemned and that we must not make other beings suffer, while at the same time gratuitous violence may be legitimate, or even recommended, and that we have the right to make certain beings suffer.
- Disruption of values :
It is not harmless to present children with a spectacle of suffering, blood and death as having aesthetic value, just as it cannot be justified by tradition,or inseparable from a cultural identity that takes precedence over all other.
It goes without saying that these considerations apply even more to what are called “bullfighting schools".
Consequently, as psychiatrists and psychologists, we demand that the spectacle of bullfighting no longer be authorised for children under sixteen”.
One Voice feels that this report proves, if proof were necessary, the extreme violence of bullfighting and the need to abolish it.
It is legitimate to fear that young spectators will suffer "traumatic effects" and "become accustomed to violence" and also that the “moral system will become fragile” and that “values will be disrupted”.
Extract from an AP release on the report established by some thirty practitioners – 25/09/2007
Extract from an AP release on the report established by some thirty practitioners – 25/09/2007
In The Arena 2011.
Michelito is a young Franco-Mexican boy of ten and a half, a star of arenas in Latin America. Just like the men, he pits his 30 kg against animals weighing several hundred kilos. Trained by his father, Michel Lagravère, a former bullfighter from the 1990s, Michelito has been placing his life in danger since the age of 6 and takes part in "shows where the animal is killed". This is a practice that would not be possible in France, since regulations ban "the death of animals in practical classes before the age of 14 and the first novillada without picador before 16”. When he toured France in 2008 as the guest of many bullfighting shows, the young boy was at the heart of a debate around his age. His trainer, who is actually his father, protested against this hypocritical French attitude arguing that his "child fights like the thirty children who do so in France”. Young Michelito’s combats were cancelled in Fontvieille and Arles by decision of the Mayor and Prefect respectively. If the “mundillo” was outraged by this decision, unable to see the problem, many people spoke out to protest against endangering the life of a child whose parents have the duty to guarantee his protection.
The DANGER of Participate in Bullfighting..
The DANGER of Participate in Bullfighting..
