New investigation: Jumbo and his miserable companions still locked up in the Muller Circus, seen from above

Our fight to save Jumbo from this hell in prison is a road strewn with pitfalls. Between those who do not want things to change and those who are convinced of the legitimacy of locking animals up for entertainment, captive animals sometimes seem to have few allies. However, for more than twenty years the circus tents have been empty, with many circus artists choosing to stop exploiting animals. We can help them in this process. We are partnered with sanctuaries in France and Europe but also in Africa and India.

In any case, anything is better than settling down or sending animals abroad to better continue exploiting them! Or worse, slaughtering them to sell them to taxidermists in anticipation of the legislative implementation decrees on animal mistreatment that has been voted in but is still pending without these essential laws.

Jumbo and his miserable companions still locked up in the Muller Circus, seen from above by One Voice on Vimeo.

Rare images, the big picture never shown

The monkeys, tigers, and Jumbo are enclosed almost all of the time. The tiger cubs, without their mother, are entrusted to a lioness... The only event that breaks their boredom is the show and its poor and humiliating acts, for just one of the monkeys and the tigers and under the permanent threat of props to coerce them three of four days a week. The rest of the time and for the rest of them, it is bars, chains, looks, noise, whips... How can they stay in good health like this? Animals who require so much exercise. And for the tigers, so much solitude; and for the hippopotamuses, company.

Our images, unpublished, bear witness once again to the fact that the animals are shut in day in, day out. They reveal what we cannot show from the ground because the circus artists stand guard, and it is better not to rub shoulders with the Mullers... Many peaceful activists have paid the price, just as forces of law and order have by trying to enforce a court decision.

Our ongoing procedures

Our appeal, started by the Association in February 2022, will determine whether the Muller consorts can be granted a reimbursement of their lawyer’s fees and will take action in supporting a State brief that on one hand does not exist, just as on the other, will determine whether the Prefect is empowered as an administrative authority to proceed with the withdrawal of the animals placed in conditions likely to cause them suffering. Because if the Prefect is not authorised and the courts close the associations’ complaints, then who is responsible for the protection of the animals?

Since then, the association has submitted a new request to the Prefect and then to the administrative court, in view of the Mullers’ criminal convictions, to request the withdrawal of the opening permits and of the proficiency certifications of these incompetent owners. The proceedings are still underway.

Finally, a new complaint filed for non-conformity of the conditions the hippopotamus is being kept in has led to a criminal mediation to which the Mullers have not deigned to respond. The file went back to the Valence prosecutor’s office for further action.

We will never give up the fight for the animals in this circus and for Jumbo in particular. Sign the petition!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice