Society's Child

Shocking pictures show emaciated elephant forced to work in Sri Lankan parade

Megan White
Evening Standard
Wed, 14 Aug 2019 00:00 UTC

Harrowing photos have emerged of an incredibly thin 70-year-old elephant who works in a parade in Sri Lanka.

Tikiiri is one of 60 elephants who joins the Perahera Festival, working every night for ten days wearing a costume, including a mask with bright lights.

The pictures reveal Tikiiri's gaunt body once her sparkly full-body robe has been removed, with her emaciated ribs on show.

Save Elephant Foundation shared the tragic pictures on Monday to mark World Elephant Day.

The charity helps to rescue and care for captive elephants across Asia and runs Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai.

Founder Lek Chailert said: "This is Tikiiri, a 70-year-old ailing female. She is one of the 60 elephants who must work in the service of the Perahera Festival in Sri Lanka this year.

"Tikiri joins in the parade early every evening until late at night every night for ten consecutive nights, amidst the noise, the fireworks, and smoke.

"She walks many kilometers every night so that people will feel blessed during the ceremony. No one sees her bony body or her weakened condition, because of her costume.

"No one sees the tears in her eyes, injured by the bright lights that decorate her mask, no one sees her difficulty to step as her legs are short shackled while she walks.

"For a ceremony, all have the right to belief as long as that belief does not disturb or harm another. How can we call this a blessing, or something holy, if we make other lives to suffer?

"Today is World Elephant Day. We cannot bring a peaceful world to the elephant if we still think that this image is acceptable.

"To love, to do no harm, to follow a path of kindness and compassion, this is the Way of Buddha. It is time to follow."

Comment: Update: Save Elephant Foundation posted this image on Facebook of Tikiri from 15th August, stating that the exhausted elephant had collapsed.

Reader Comments

Charley Horse · 2019-08-16T23:59:32Z

The footage of George Westinghouse "proving" that Tesla's AC system is dangerous by electrocuting an elephant was brought back to life in the scene in The Shawshank Redemption where the execution goes horribly wrong. It took 30 minutes and they cooked the poor thing in front of thousands of people.

This "civilisation" (as we all agree to call it) that we live in makes us all freaking idiots and it's high time to get out.

Fester · 2019-08-17T04:32:07Z

Charlie Horse Westinghouse? Wasn't Edison the one electrocuting animals in public displays? And with DC, because AC was his? Westinghouse was funding Tesla. He found out that Tesla wanted (and had the know-how!) to provide free electricity to everyone, and stopped funding him immediately. (And switched to Edison, AC, and thus ConED was born)

It's what I remember reading, anyway. It's hard to find the real Nikola Tesla. Most? All? of his work was stolen, it's a definite possibility he was the most intelligent human ever lived, and he's buried under a century of myths, fables, stories, propaganda, slander, hero-worship, lies, smears etc., etc...

As for this poor elephant... well, everything we do to our 2D brethren is being done to us in turn by our 4D overlords. This, I think, will come as a terminal shock to people who treat other living beings as "things". We're all in their CAFO, and they're steadily increasing production.

Charley Horse · 2019-08-19T03:28:17Z

Fester Sorry, I was going off the top of my head with the above comment, you're right... Eddison, the other ignoramus, Tesla worked for both. Made light work for Eddison and he took all the credit, It was Tesla's very first job in the new world as it was called back then. Westinghouse made the equipment and with JP Morgan providing the funds (when Tesla ran out of millions) they got into cahoots, discredited Tesla and forced the world to pay for electricity. Tesla was as famous as Einstein at the time and then disappeared from the public awareness until he re-emerged at the turn of the century for the truth to come percolating back up.

Tesla was destroyed because he was the epitome of having the ability to make millions (billions in today's reckoning) of dollars on his own from his patented creations and someone decided that the world was not allowed to have such geniuses with so much freedom to do as they saw fit on their own terms, especially if it was for the betterment of the human race so all of these Tycoons - Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, Westinghouse (you should see how highly these main players are spoken of) financed the education system to emasculate the geniuses and free thinking individuals while covering their tracks in victimhood (they were all beginning to get old) they incorporated corporations to cap the wages of their brilliant economists and business geniuses all the way down to the worker bees at the bottom of the pyramid. No more Tesla's were allowed to come along and those that did (e.g. the recent tech billionaires from left field) all became dark horses, Gates, Jobs, Musk, Brin, Page, Zuckerberg et al., Dementors in stunning light and digital fantasy, each and every last one of them handled by the childrens children of the first wave of tycoons through secret meetings and money deals.

Mysterkarl · 2019-08-19T03:39:37Z

Charlie Horse You've completely taken away from the story of a mistreated elderly lady. Ask yourself, is this a good example of being woke?

Fester · 2019-08-20T01:13:46Z

Charlie Horse all good, wasn't 100% sure I was remembering correctly myself...

Tesla was destroyed because he was the epitome of having the ability to make millions (billions in today's reckoning) of dollars on his own from his patented creations and someone decided that the world was not allowed to have such geniuses with so much freedom to do as they saw fit on their own terms, especially if it was for the betterment of the human race so all of these Tycoons - Rockefeller, Morgan, Ford, Westinghouse (you should see how highly these main players are spoken of) financed the education system to emasculate the geniuses and free thinking individuals while covering their tracks in victimhood (they were all beginning to get old) they incorporated corporations to cap the wages of their brilliant economists and business geniuses all the way down to the worker bees at the bottom of the pyramid. No more Tesla's were allowed to come along and those that did (e.g. the recent tech billionaires from left field) all became dark horses, Gates, Jobs, Musk, Brin, Page, Zuckerberg et al., Dementors in stunning light and digital fantasy, each and every last one of them handled by the childrens children of the first wave of tycoons through secret meetings and money deals.

Yes

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Quote of the Day

"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction."

~ US State Department, 1948

- George Kennan

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Shocking pictures show emaciated elephant forced to work in Sri Lankan parade

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