OPINION:
Tourists who pay to ride elephants are essentially ensuring that those elephants will spend most of their lives miserable in chains (“Travel: Thailand’s great elephant debate,” Web, Feb. 24). Unwitting travelers are duped into believing that their money is going to “help” elephants, but international watchdogs have documented that wild elephants are being captured to perpetuate this lucrative tourist industry.
Thailand is the world’s largest promoter of elephant camps, where the barbaric Phaajaan ritual is used to break baby elephants and force them to submit to humans. Phaajaan translated means “breaking the love between” (referring to the love between baby elephant and his or her mother). In these training camps still-nursing baby elephants are dragged from their mothers, bound with ropes and steel cables and immobilized in wooden cages. They are beaten mercilessly for days while deprived of food, water and sleep. Thai villagers gouge them with nail-studded sticks, inserting the sharp point into the elephant’s ear canal and jabbing the sensitive skin between their toes. The babies panic, collapse in exhaustion, defecate in fear and scream out in terror and pain.
Tourists who don’t want to support this appalling cruelty should only visit parks or sanctuaries to see the elephants in their natural environment, living as nature intended instead of paying to take a ride or see them paint or perform circus tricks.
JENNIFER O’CONNOR
Senior writer
PETA Foundation
Norfolk, Va.
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