New Games, Same Cruelty: Unreleased PETA Video Shows Continued Abuse at Chitwan Elephant Festival

New Games, Same Cruelty: Unreleased PETA Video Shows Continued Abuse at Chitwan Elephant Festival

Chitwan – Just weeks before the 2025 Chitwan Elephant Festival, PETA has today released never-before-seen footage of the 2024 festival, where mahouts are seen beating and jabbing wounded and scarred elephants on their heads, faces, and ears – even with veterinarians standing close by. PETA’s previously released footage sparked widespread public outcry, prompting the festival organisers to make misleading claims that it has been updated to be ‘elephant friendly’, (a claim they are making again) but some of the games returned in 2024 with the same suffering and abuse.

A mahout jabs an elephant with a bullhook at the 2024 Chitwan Elephant Festival

“Unsuspecting tourists are being lured to this festival of cruelty, where terrified elephants are beaten and jabbed, and live under the constant threat of violence,” says PETA Asia President Jason Baker. “PETA is calling on government officials to end this relentless abuse and shut down this sham event that treats thinking, feeling elephants as nothing more than photo props.”

Multiple PETA investigations into the Chitwan Elephant Festival reveal that elephants are routinely beaten into submission by handlers, who repeatedly strike and jab the animals with sticks, makeshift wooden knives, and bullhooks – weapons that resemble fireplace pokers with a sharp hook on one end – to force them to “play” football. One video from the latest festival shows a handler jabbing, kicking, and beating an elephant at least 64 times in full view of the public, and another mahout is seen elbowing a curious baby elephant in the face.

Elephants are highly social animals who thrive in the company of their extended families. Births are joyous celebrations, and the deaths of loved ones are mourned. In nature, elephants live in matriarchal herds, protect one another, and share mothering responsibilities for the herds’ babies. But elephants in captivity are deprived of everything natural and important to them and often exhibit obsessive, repetitive behaviour indicative of severe psychological distress.

Since the 2024 event, after hearing from PETA, all of the festival’s major sponsors – including Pepsi, BYD, Nepal Investment Mega Bank (NIMB), Buddha Air, Mahalaxmi Bikas Bank, NLG Insurance, TechMinds Network, and Manakamana Darshan – dropped their support and severed ties with the event.

PETA encourages everyone to urge festival organisers and supporters to cancel these cruel “games” and to never attend an event or festival where animals are used as entertainment props.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone. For more information, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow PETA Asia on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

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