JUST IN: The Gadhimai festival in Nepal has banned animal sacrifice, putting an end to a horrific massacre that had been taking place for the past 250 years. This is a long overdue victory for animals.
Until now, every five years, the town of Bariyarpur, Nepal, played host to the world’s largest animal sacrifice. Hundreds of thousands of animals, including chickens, goats and buffalo, were rounded up and marched to their deaths at the site of the temple of the Hindu goddess Gadhimai. After the traditional beheading of up to 10,000 buffalo at the start of the “holy” festival, hundreds of men hacked away at more defenceless animals with dull blades – a painful and terrifying way to die.
Today, at last, the bloodshed has been forbidden. In a statement, the Gadhimai Temple Trust said:
The Gadhimai Temple Trust hereby declares our formal decision to end animal sacrifice. With your help, we can ensure Gadhimai 2019 is free from bloodshed. Moreover, we can ensure Gadhimai 2019 is a momentous celebration of life.
Many organisations worked to help end this atrocity, among them PETA and our international affiliates. Almost 90,000 supporters from all over the world sent messages to Nepal officials urging them to stop the bloodshed. Our friends over at PETA India also took to the streets of India to protest in a joint demo outside the Embassy of Nepal with the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations.
Thank you so much for being part of this victory. We’d like to congratulate all the local groups in Nepal that had been campaigning on the ground for years to end the bloodshed. Today, compassionate people all over the world can celebrate the fact that animals will no longer be hacked to death by the thousand for an archaic ritual.
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