Rome, animal activist denudes in protest at Capitoline Museums under the She-wolf

It was a different morning than usual today, Thursday, Feb. 8, at the Capitoline Museums, where three Animal Rebellion activists led an action: one of them, in particular, stripped naked in front of the statue of the Capitoline She-wolf, while two others, after throwing on the statue of Marcus Aurelius on horseback with purple fake cobwebs, stuck to the floor in front of the work, wearing T-shirts with the slogans “No more animals in circuses” and “Animal Rebellion Future Vegetable.”

The action, Animal Rebellion announced in a statement, is part of the Kimba Campaign, which began Feb. 1 with a disobedience action in Piazza del Popolo, in the heart of the capital. The Civil Disobedience Campaign was born and inspired by the episode involving Kimba, the lion who escaped from the circus last Nov. 11 in Ladispoli. “Forced to perform almost every day only to return to a cramped cage,” say the animal activists, “Kimba chooses to escape the regime of agony and exploitation to which he is subjected. Kimba’s escape is thus an act of Rebellion, Resistance and self-determination from which, as human beings, we have everything to learn. Through the nonviolent direct actions of the Campaign, the Animal Rebellion movement wants to obtain the abolition of the use of nonhuman animals in circuses and their Liberation.”

Animal Rebellion’s request to the Italian government, as a nonviolent civil resistance movement, is to put an end to the exploitation of animals in circuses throughout the country by immediately issuing a legislative decree implementing Paragraph 1 of Article 2 of Law No. 106/2022. Law No. 106 of 2022 has already been approved by Parliament and is therefore in force, yet the government is not making it effective, but rather continues to fund these abuses. Animal Rebellion also demands that all animals currently forced to perform in Italian circuses be freed and reintegrated into their natural habitat where possible, or that they be transferred to Exotic Animal Sanctuaries with spaces that conform to their ethology and are able to provide for their needs.

“Even these statues,” declares Maria Sofia, an Animal Rebellion activist, “testify to animal exploitation. It is absurd to be indignant because we are protesting without ruining them, and at the same time not be angry at the cruelty that nonhuman animals are forced to endure in circuses and farms. We lash out at monuments not to harm them, but to show how the anthropocentric celebration inscribed in them is still accepted in the present: now as in the past, it is considered normal to use nonhuman individuals for the interests of our species, making them products of entertainment and killing them for violent, unjust and unsustainable food consumption. Animal husbandry is among the main culprits of the ecoclimate crisis; if this continues, we will not even have a future on our planet. We call on the government to stop public subsidies to livestock farms, and to implement the existing Law No. 106 of 2022 that makes circuses with animals illegal, so as to eliminate violence that should remain dusty and full of cobwebs in History.”

At the end of the action, the three activists and the photographer accompanying them were taken to the police station and identified, but no action has been taken against them at the moment.

Rome, animal activist denudes in protest at Capitoline Museums under the She-wolf

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