Domino Effect! Sponsors Cut Ties With Cruel Chitwan Elephant Festival After Push From PETA

 Domino Effect! Sponsors Cut Ties With Cruel Chitwan Elephant Festival After Push From PETA

Kathmandu – Pummelled for polo! After hearing from PETA about how elephants are beaten into submission at the Chitwan Elephant Festival, finance companies Khalti and eSewa both quickly pulled their sponsorships of the disgraced event, with the latter writing that it “firmly believe[s] in promoting initiatives that foster compassion and respect for all living beings, and…stand[s] against any practices that involve animal mistreatment.” The Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation has also confirmed to PETA that no government elephants will be used in the games this year, marking a significant shift from previous years.

PETA has exposed handlers at the late-December festival—in which elephants are forced to race, give rides, and “play” polo and football—for repeatedly hitting and jabbing elephants with bullhooks (weapons that resemble a fireplace poker with a sharp hook on one end), sticks, and makeshift wooden knives. One elephant was beaten for nearly a minute, and many suffered from deep, bloody wounds around their heads and ears. When not being forced to perform during the festival, the elephants are used for rides by tourists visiting Chitwan.

“Khalti and eSewa did the right thing in refusing to bankroll a hideous spectacle in which elephants are beaten, and their spirits are broken, all for fleeting human amusement,” says PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker. “PETA is urging other sponsors to follow their example and is calling on the festival to take elephant exploitation off the itinerary at this year’s event and beyond.”

Elephants are highly intelligent and social animals who thrive in the company of their extended families. Births are joyous celebrations, and the deaths of loved ones are mourned. But elephants in captivity are deprived of everything natural and important to them and often exhibit obsessive, repetitive behaviours indicative of severe psychological distress.

PETA has written to President Ramchandra Paudel asking him to decline the invitation to be Chief Guest at the festival. The group has also sent letters to the Regional Hotel Association Chitwan asking it to cancel the cruel “games” and to the Nepal Tourism Board,  urging it to intervene and shut down the festival’s exploitation of elephants.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.