Student Life at International School Bangkok

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Student Life at International School Bangkok

PantherNation

Student Life at International School Bangkok

PantherNation

Save the Elephants

Credit%3A+Ciel+Sriprasert
Credit: Ciel Sriprasert

Last year, I spent my GCW trip at a place in Chiang Mai called Elephant Nature Park. There I learned about the elephant culture in Thailand with details so vivid and so unimaginatively awful that they made me sick to the stomach. Founded by an inspirational woman called Lek Chailert, ENP is a sanctuary for rescued elephants, as well as cats, dogs, and monkeys that were abandoned by their owners in the Thai floods a few years ago. The most impactful stories Lek told us were about the elephants.

As you probably know, Thailand is famous for its elephant culture. Tourists come from all over the world to ride them, see them do tricks, feed them, and overall experience the wonderfully colorful and eccentric culture that Thailand has to offer. Many come, bucket lists and guidebooks in hand, unaware of what actually goes into the entertainment they receive from the largest animals to walk the earth. So let me tell you.

These animals are tortured. 

There is a process called forced breeding, where a female elephant is chained with her front legs together and her back legs wide apart so she has no means of escape. A group of bulls (male elephants) are released and commence to rape the female. This process occurs for months, even after she is impregnated, all the way up until she gives birth. It can be so physically straining that the female elephant is likely to break her back, and so mentally traumatizing that, upon giving birth, she might kill her baby because she is so terrified for its future.

Baby elephants are tortured so that they will be broken and moldable by their owners. They are taken away from their mothers far too early so that they can learn to paint pictures, as elephant painting is a famous attraction for tourists in Thailand. The mahouts (elephant riders) use sharp hooks on the end of sticks to hit elephants very hard on the sensitive skin behind and inside their ears, their neck, and their eyes. They use slingshots to shoot unwilling elephants directly into the eyeballs, more often than not with the result of blinding them. There is also a process called the Phajaan or “crush”, which refers to the breaking of the elephants to do the mahouts’ bidding. This is when a young elephant is chained into an extremely tight cage with his/her legs each to a post for days. It is constantly physically abused until its spirit is “crushed”, the will taken completely out of it, so that it can be under the mahouts’ control. After experiences such as these, a broken baby elephant no longer cries for its mother or nanny; it does not even recognize them. Treatment as awful as this continues for the elephants’ entire life.

Many elephants grow up forced to do manual labour. In a process called elephant logging, they must drag extremely heavy logs through forests up mountains. Lek told the story of an old elephant who had a mahout on his back and a chain around his chest with a large log attached. Deep gouge marks in his chest marked where the chain was cutting into his flesh, and he was screaming in pain. However, the mahout continued to yell at him and hit him with the hook. Forced to continue, the chain dug even deeper into the elephant’s widening cut.

There is also something in Thailand called elephant begging. Elephants are taken into large, scary, bustling cities and forced to beg for money from tourists. Many of them are hit by cars, and the city scene traumatizes them. They do not belong in cities. They do not belong at the disposal of humans.

The processes described above are just examples of what Thai elephants endure for tourism. This is what they go through so that people can sit on top them and take pictures, laugh as they feed them bananas and watermelons, or watch as they very charmingly paint endearing pictures. The processes described show just how much they endure to entertain oblivious, or else unsympathetic, humans.

I am writing about this because people must be aware. I myself have ridden elephants due to my lack of education on these poor animals’ suffering, and after what I have since learned, I wish I could turn back time.

You can help. Hopefully, reading this has given you an idea of the terrible lives many Thai elephants lead. That’s already a start, for a crucial first step towards abolishing elephant torture is learning about it. So tell your friends. People must understand that the elephant culture put on display for tourism has an awfully bloody background, and it should not be supported. They must understand what these elephants have suffered for humans’ enjoyment. People traveling to Thailand must know that they should not pay one single penny to support the elephant tourist industry. This information must be common knowledge, so that there is no more income for the elephants’ torturers.

So tell your friends. Visit Elephant Nature Park. Donate to parks like it. Share what you know. Share what other’s don’t.

Save the elephants.

Johanna Stiefler Johnson

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  • K

    KerryOct 31, 2014 at 3:12 am

    Nice article. We are developing a website to educate people about this. Could we use your article? Feel free to join us on the site. As well, another friend is studying this at university and asked non-thais to fill out her survey about elephant tourism. Links are below.

    Survey – https://docs.google.com/a/isb.ac.th/forms/d/1R_R8EiHLlMHtFDuMMWFdnDpSPKAuEU_n9SJwlNasvVk/formResponse

    Elephant education site (just started)
    https://sites.google.com/a/students.isb.ac.th/elephant-education/?pli=1

    Reply
  • C

    Conor DUFFYOct 30, 2014 at 6:47 am

    This is a very important article. Too many of us see elephants as an interesting side show in Thailand – rides, tricks and things. But there is a very real and dark underside to all of this – from how they are treated by mahouts in co-called “sanctuaries”, to the illegal ivory trade. It is worth educating yourself about so you might have the right questions in your mind the next time you see an elephant, rather than the simple “Oh look! An elephant!” that so many tourists leave it at.

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