Most of us have more or less seen elephant tourism in videos, even if it is through social media. There is a painful educational process behind these videos, which seem very sweet to most people. This difficult training process, which begins when baby elephants are forcibly taken from their mothers, has very sad images.
The many kinds of pain suffered by elephants who were forcibly removed from their natural habitats in Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia will make you confront the dark side of humanity once again.
Elephants, who were forcibly separated from their mothers when they were very young, are chained as the first part of training.
Elephants go through a process called Phajaan as the first part of the training process. Phajaan simply means to traumatize the soul of an elephant. The so-called trainers who traumatized the elephants in the first place; They literally torture animals by squeezing them into narrow cages and tying them to chains. Elephants, who have no choice but to be obedient, are tamed with sleeplessness, hunger and thirst.
Elephants who are subjected to serious violence have the opportunity to easily knock down people riding on their backs, but they cannot do so due to fear. Animals that are beaten at the beginning of the training process naturally cannot show any objection behavior.
The open wounds caused by the chains make the elephants suffer with every movement.
When the tourism time is over, the elephants return to their tiny cages and are chained again to prevent them from escaping or resisting. The chain, which wears out over time, naturally causes open wounds on their skin. The sound of the elephants crying out against this pain can reach the surrounding villages.
This heartbreaking training is not limited to simple training such as carrying tourists on back. Elephants who are forced to draw are subjected to violence hundreds of times until they learn this process. Although the elephants who are forced to play with tourists with basketballs seem very cute, many of them actually receive this training by being nailed or stabbed.
The elephant named Tikiiri, who was taken to the festival parade in Sri Lanka, almost died from weakness.
The owners, who hid the elephant’s weakness thanks to the costume draped over Tikiiri during the parade, made the old elephant walk until late every night. For this photo, which has heartbreaking images in every detail, the Elephant Rescue Foundation made a statement about these images: “No one sees the tears in his eyes hurt by the bright lights adorning his mask, no one sees that he has difficulty in taking steps because his legs are short chains while walking.”
We should not forget that it is up to us, the tourists, not to show interest in this and similar tourism. In this content, which once again reveals that there is nothing that human beings would not do for money, we invite you to be more sensitive towards animals.
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