Please End Elephant Rides in Thailand To Help Eliminate The Elephants Being Crushed During The Barbaric Process of Phajaan

  • by: Kristin W
  • recipient: Office of the Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha

Imagine riding an elephant.  This is what you may dream of.
However, there's a dark side to elephant tourism that many people just don't seem to be aware of… But the fact is those wild elephants need to be tamed before they can be ridden. Except for the taming process in Southeast Asia is not the same as with a wild horse. It's much more brutal and is accomplished when the elephants are very young. Wild elephants won't let humans ride on top of them. So in order to tame a wild elephant, it is tortured as a baby to completely break its spirit. The process is called Phajaan, or "the crush". 'The Crush' means "to divorce the baby elephant from its spirit" or to ''split the will" of a baby elephant. Phajaan or 'Crushing' is the traditional Asian torture of young elephants to break their spirit. It is done so that they are submissive to humans. The Phajaan process originated in hill tribe communities in India and South East Asia, located in areas where elephants naturally occur. The ''ceremony'' of Phajaan is said to have originated from the belief that the tribe's shaman can separate the spirit of an elephant from its body, in effect driving the wilful and wild spirit out of an elephant and leaving it under the control of its handlers, i.e. mahouts. It is important to remember that today not all captive elephants undergo brutal training, the experience is different for each individual elephant. In reality wild caught elephants are likely to undergo harsher techniques of training but todays majority of captive breed elephants in Thailand go through positive reinforcement techniques rather than suffer the 'Crush'. It is likely the older working elephant's have undergone harsher training but the younger ones may not have.  Please send your captive elephants to a sanctuary.  Please end the elephant rides in Thailand.

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.