At war with the elephants: Two cents on torture
Death of an elephant (BBC)
Warning! This article includes mild description of the torture of an elephant.
There. I find that disclaimer interesting. Once upon a time, a poster asked me to not repost images of the Dresden firestorm because they were too horrible. While I understand, that's part of the interesting thing. This is an
elephant, and it appears there is a war brewing between human folk and elephant folk:
Across much of the Asian elephant's range, (IFAW) says, increases in human numbers are depleting the area of natural habitat the animals rely on ....
.... "So the elephants have taken to crop-raiding to supplement their diets, leading to intense human-animal conflicts. At least 35 people have been killed in the region in the last six months."
First off, on a lighter note, I'm brought to mind of an old Garfield sequence in which Jon and Garfield are watching a "killer-lion" movie, and Garfield is sitting there with a "Lion" pennant and a grin on his face. The carnage is too awful; Jon can't look. Finally the people kill the lion. Jon cheers, celebrates. Garfield smiles and notes, "At the gun, the score was Lion forty-two, People one."
And so it seems: I used that line when an elephant broke loose in Hawaii and rampaged near a shopping mall. At least the elephant got to crush a few cars and attack its trainers before being put down.
But as Wildlife Trust India noted:
Vivek Menon of WTI said its report had been ignored. He said: "This primitive and archaic elephant capture method should be abandoned.
"There are humane methods available today that ensure the minimum amount of stress to animals while in human contact.
So what they're talking about essentially is the humane treatment of an elephant held in captivity:
The elephant was captured under a programme funded by the government of the central state of Chattisgarh, which tries to reduce conflict by seizing displaced wild elephants and taming them as working animals.
The cameraman, Amalendu Mishra, said: "The elephant was first lassoed in the night of 5 February after being made to run a long distance to tire it out.
"It was again shot at with tranquiliser darts the following morning. Once it collapsed, they tied a thick rope around its neck and pulled it away flanked by tame elephants." ,,,,
.... Witnesses say the elephant was repeatedly jabbed with spikes and struck with bamboo canes.
His legs were tied with ropes, while others were attached to the lasso around his neck and tightened to ensure his head could not move. Then his tusks were sawn off with a hacksaw.
He was left without food and water, and died 18 days later, apparently of stress, starvation and thirst.
And that's the reason I bring this up here. There's a red disclaimer at the beginning of this post, and that's all well and fine; I can imagine that people don't want to read about an elephant being mutilated and neglected to death for the crime of being hungry.
But think of this: That elephant is, essentially, a Prisoner of War.
The elephant was one of many coming into conflict with human beings to the tune of thirty-five humans dead and unreported (and therefore unknown) elephant casualties.
So please remember, if this elephant's death disturbs you in any way, that it was a Prisoner of War, an enemy combatant, and unlawful at that.
What if that was a person?
What if that was, say, Bin Laden himself? Or, for the war-pigs, Saddam Hussein?
You know, some of us who have viewed paintings by elephants and are aware that elephants know when one of theirs passes through the gates even hundreds of miles away and have watched elephants pretend reverence for the dead would find this elephant's death to be a murder. But this point is only relevant in the sense that this elephant was treated no worse than some people claim Prisoners of War should be treated.
I am not without my reasons for disclaiming the news article attached to this post at the outset, and I think anyone who pauses to think about it will understand that. But why? What compels us to see indecency here? What is so discomforting about it? It's good enough for the enemy, right? And now this elephant is the enemy. Too bad about that, but if the elephant didn't want to be the enemy, it should have stayed hungry and out of the way.
The crew's director, Mike Pandey, said: "We were horrified at what was being done in the guise of scientific management of elephant populations and were forced to watch this medieval torture till the elephant died."
If the torture of an elephant is unsettling, for instance, what of human beings?
:m:,
Tiassa