If African elephants (Loxodonta africana) are faring badly — ceaselessly slaughtered by poachers for their precious tusks — their Asian cousins are no better off, and the cause of their troubles is the same: humankind. In Asia, three in four elephants are victims of cruelty and mistreatment, as denounced by a report produced by the non-profit animal welfare organisation World Animal Protection.

At tourists' service

The organisation examined the conditions of more than 3,000 elephants used for tourist activities in six Asian countries, finding a very large number of cases of mistreatment (three quarters of all cases examined, as noted) and a wide variety of violence inflicted on the pachyderms. "If a wild animal can be ridden, hugged or interacted with, it is likely that cruelty is also involved," explained Jan Schmidt-Burbach, the report's author.

The mistreatment

Elephants that "work" in the tourism sector live permanently chained up (whereas in the wild they are accustomed to covering vast ranges, travelling up to one hundred kilometres a day), malnourished and without the necessary care. According to the report, calves are torn from their mothers (these highly social animals are accustomed to living in large herds); it is estimated that up to 200 elephant calves are captured and smuggled out of Myanmar every year. The animals undergo intensive training using coercive methods — they are tied up and struck violently — in order to tame them and try to break their spirit. This practice, known as phajaan, is intended precisely to make the elephant docile and allow the trainer to domesticate it more easily. Numerous cases have been documented of elephants that have died as a result of beatings, or that stop eating, no longer able to endure that "life".

The countries involved

The World Animal Protection investigation examined the conditions of elephants in six Asian countries: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and India. Among these, the worst offender is Thailand, a country that is home to three quarters of all elephants kept in captivity for tourism-related activities.

Animals are not entertainment

Asian elephants are, sadly, not the only species exploited for tourism purposes. Also in Thailand, tigers are chained up, sedated and forced into unnatural poses to allow tourists to take a photograph with the big cat. In Indonesia there are so-called "masked monkeys" — primates forced to perform in the street dressed as little girls to entertain tourists. According to a study commissioned by World Animal Protection from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at the University of Oxford, this type of tourism, at the animals' expense, moves 110 million people around the world every year. "It is truly sad that tourists — undoubtedly the victims of a business that exploits animals and their genuine interest in them — end up supporting attractions that not only keep their animals in dreadful conditions, but also cause considerable damage in terms of conservation," said the director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, David Macdonald.