PAN will request a parliamentary hearing with the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security to discuss the case of a ten-year-old child and a 20-year-old girl who were injured during a bullfight in Corucha.
In a statement, PAN spokesperson Inês Souza Real regrets that “the life of a child and a young woman was put at risk” and stresses the importance of the hearing in Parliament of Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho following the accident in the municipality of Corús, which he considers “very serious”.
“PAN wants to hear from the Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security and has asked the government to find out whether it will determine who is responsible for the incident and whether it will set age limits for watching and participating in bullfighting,” a PAN spokesperson said.
According to the regional newspaper Notícias do Sorraia, the incident occurred on August 16 during the last celebration of Nossa Senhora do Castelo, which took place in the municipality of Coruche, in the district of Santarém.
Two young women suffered bruises and fractures, and, according to the head of the municipal fire department of Koruš, quoted by the same newspaper, six more received minor injuries, and another 27 people were assisted by firefighters.
People-Animais-Natureza criticizes the fact that on its website the municipality of Coruche does not provide “any warnings regarding the risks of this activity and does not set any age limits for participation in these activities, which every year result in deaths.”
According to PAN, this “situation constitutes a clear violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and since 2014 the Portuguese State has been warned by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child about this serious problem.”
“Despite these warnings, the state has completely ignored the problem, the situation that led to the death of a 15-year-old boy in 2022 during a bullfight in Moita and the brutal rape of this 10-year-old child,” Ines de Souza Real lamented in a statement.
PAN also recalled the 2022 bullfighting incident in Moitense, which left a young man dead but did not prompt the Moitense municipality to take “any responsibility or stop the bullfighting.”