BOGOTA – About 5,000 people marched through the streets of downtown Bogota to commemorate World Animal Day, the date when Colombian activists concentrate their criticism of the government for its lack of interest in these living creatures.

Carrying coffins, crippled pets and signs protesting animal abuse, the activists demonstrated Sunday against such practices as bullfighting and abandoning pets.

“The government sponsors killing and mistreatment,” the Colombian Pro-animals Foundation representative Fabiola Blanco told Efe.

The animal rights activist said that societies as violent as Colombia’s should not tolerate “cruel events” like bullfighting.

Animals “are our little brothers and they need a lot of love and affection,” said the spokeswoman for the non-governmental organization, who together with other activists convoked this commemorative march that was held in several cities around the country.

Blanco regretted that the government does not assign a budget for educational campaigns about keeping and caring for animals, as well as about sterilization.

Pro-animals was founded 30 years ago and, besides working for “animal rights,” it runs a garden for dogs rescued from the streets in Bogota.

World Animal Day was instituted in 1929 by a congress of the World Organization for Animal Protection held in Vienna. EFE