The Italian Circus Authority (ENC) has called for a clampdown on unregulated outfits after enslaved immigrants were found performing in tanks filled with piranha fish and tarantulas.
Speaking a day after a southern circus was closed down and its owners charged with people trafficking and human slavery, ENC chief Egidio Palmiri said the incoming government should revise laws that freed up the sector and allowed ''cowboys'' to set themselves up in the business from one day to the next.
Before a recent deregulation, he said, it took would-be Barnums five years to get a license for a 500-seater circus and ten years to gain approval for bigger shows.
''We criticised that liberalisation, saying it would worsen and in some cases degrade the quality and management of shows. We have been proved right''. Palmiri urged the new parliament to mark World Circus Day on April 19 by ''restoring the integrity of Italy's great circus tradition''. In a case that was widely publicised here, a Bulgarian girl was freed Wednesday from a tiny circus which forced her to hold her breath in an icy tank full of piranha fish.
Citing eye witness reports, police said the girl, 19, sometimes tried to get out of the tank - only for the circus owner to push her back in with the fish.
In the circus's second and final act, the girl's 16-year-old sister was laid out in a glass 'coffin' while snakes and tarantulas crawled over her.
On one occasion a snake squeezed her so hard she suffered severe bruising, police said.
According to the police, the girls and their parents were forced to live in ''inhuman'' conditions in the backs of two lorries.
Two Bulgarian citizens have been placed under investigation for helping the circus managers lure Eastern Europeans on false job promises.
An unspecified number of circus 'slaves' managed to escape before Italian authorities received reports of the Bulgarians' conditions, police said.
Under threats of violence and warnings that they would be reported as illegal immigrants, the family worked 15-to-20-hour days performing menial duties and physically demanding labour.
They were paid 100 euros a week instead of the 500 they had agreed to.
The family said they were sometimes beaten when they complained.
