Stop Elephant Riding and Taming

  • by: Roya J
  • recipient: Government of Malaysia
Elephant riding seems like a fun activity to do when you're on tour in countries such as Thailand. However, once you learn the disturbing truth behind this activity, your opinion will be quickly changed. Wild elephants don't let humans ride them, so in order to tame a wild elephant, they are taken from their mothers as babies, then tortured to the point where their spirits are broken. The process is very commonly known as Phajaan, or in English, "the crush". When baby elephants are taken from their mothers, they are confined to a very small space where they are unable to move, such as cages and holes in the ground. After that, the baby elephants are beaten into submission to the will of their tamers, with clubs, pierced with sharp bullhooks, and also starved and deprived of sleep.
In this video of elephants being tamed, made by PETA, you can see how terrible the process of making an elephant submissive to being ridden etc., is truly dreadful.
Elephant taming is a brutal process, however, it is a traditional process in Southeast Asia that has been going on for hundreds of years. However now instead of making the elephants submissive to traditional purposes such as logging or military use, they are used to entertain tourists. Tourists, in most cases unaware of what is going on, pay the tamers to be allowed to ride the elephants, which in turn supports the gruesome process of elephant taming for tourism purposes in order to make money.
The purpose of this petition is to convince the king of Malaysia to light up the Kuala Lumpur Twin Towers in blue, in order to raise awareness of this horrifying process. For that to happen, we will need signatures, so please sign this petition and share it. There are also many other things you can do as a person, such as donate to organizations that work every day towards stopping gruesome processes towards animals such as this one and generally spread awareness about this.
Sign Petition
Sign Petition
You have JavaScript disabled. Without it, our site might not function properly.

Privacy Policy

By signing, you accept Care2's Terms of Service.
You can unsub at any time here.

Having problems signing this? Let us know.