Hindu worshippers have begun beheading thousands of buffalo in Nepalas part of what is thought to be the world’s largest animal sacrifice event.
The Gadhimai festival started in the early hours of Tuesday morning as a priest killed a goat, rat, chicken, pig and pigeon and then offered blood from his own body.
Around 200 butchers wielding curved kukri knives then descended on a walled temple arena containing an estimated 3,500 buffalo to behead the animals.
Campaigners for animal rights charity Humane Society International described seeing baby buffaloes bellowing as they watched their mothers being decapitated.
They said others collapsed from exhaustion, sickness and stress as worshippers attempted to drag them to their deaths.
Gadhimai Hindu festival: World’s ‘largest animal sacrifice’
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Thousands of people from Nepal and neighbouring India travelled to Bariyarpur village to witness the festival, which occurs every five years.
A Hindu devotee prepares to slaughter a buffalo (AFP via Getty Images)
The sacrifices went ahead despite temple authorities announcing a ban in 2015 and Nepal’s supreme court directing the government to reduce animal sacrifice a year later.
Alokparna Sengupta, managing director of Humane Society International in India, said being at the festival was “one of the most depressing and challenging experiences of my life”.
“The suffering of these animals is so upsetting, they have endured exhausting journeys to get here and are paraded in front of a baying crowd as all around them they witness other animals being decapitated one by one,” she said.
Devotees raise their sacrificial blades at the sacrificial ceremony (REUTERS)
“Buffalo calves look on in bewilderment as their mothers are slaughtered in front of them. The hysteria and apparent jubilation at seeing confused and frightened animals being slaughtered was very disturbing.”
In the last week the Indian border force and campaigners seized hundreds of baby goats, pigeons and buffaloes at the border.
“We may not have a bloodless Gadhimai this time, but we are determined that one day we will see an end to this gruesome spectacle,” Ms Sengupta added.
Mimi Bekhechi, Peta’s director of international programmes, said: “Nepali officials promised – but have failed – to protect thousands of petrified animals from being dragged and transported to a violent mass killing that starts today.
“The government must act forcefully to prevent this bloodbath from taking place again or feel the impact of a tourist boycott.”
She added: “Devotees are bringing universal condemnation to a wonderful religion – which needn’t be based on fear and cruelty – and just as widow-burning and human-baby sacrifice have ended, so must the horror of an animal-slaughter festival.
“Gruesome images of animals looking up pitifully and struggling as they’re hacked into pieces ruin Nepal’s reputation, and we urge all of its compassionate citizens to join the international clamour for an end to such barbarity.”
In 2009, at the height of the festival, around 500,000 buffaloes, goats, pigeons and other animals were killed. After protests in the intervening years 30,000 were killed in 2014.
Devotees believe the ritual slaughter brings good luck and encourage Gadhimai, the Hindu goddess of power, to answer their wishes.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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