The White Lotus Director Mike White Reveals Baby Monkey Abuse in Thailand, Where New Season Is Set
The White Lotus Director Mike White Reveals Baby Monkey Abuse in Thailand, Where New Season Is Set
Koh Samui— With the new season of The White Lotus currently airing, creator Mike White—who filmed the show’s third season on the island of Koh Samui, which stars Lisa from Blackpink, Praya Lundberg, and Patrick Schwarzenegger—is calling on Thailand’s prime minister to end the use of forced monkey labour following a PETA investigation inside the “schools” where endangered baby pig-tailed macaques are torn away from their mothers, chained for years, and driven insane by endless confinement—all so that they can be forcibly trained to pick coconuts. Photos from PETA’s investigation are available here, and video footage is available here.
“I have just finished filming season three of The White Lotus on Samui. It’s a beautiful place, but I was shocked to learn from my friends at PETA that there and elsewhere in Thailand, monkeys are forced to work for the coconut industry,” White writes to Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra. “I urge you to end this exploitation of our fellow primates and ensure that Thailand’s entire coconut industry transitions to humane harvesting methods that don’t rely on forced monkey labor.”
PETA investigators documented that baby monkeys—who were abducted from their families in nature or bred on-site and taken from their mothers when they were as young as 3 months old—were tethered on short ropes and chains, kept in flooded or trash-strewn areas with no shelter from extreme weather, and denied comfort, enrichment, or adequate socialization. Many of them were tied to tiny cages on which their skin was chafed raw from the metal bars. Monkeys paced neurotically, and some ran frantically while attached to tethers, repeatedly choking themselves on their collars.
PETA notes that the schools—which are promoted to tourists on the Thai government website—put on deceptive coconut-picking “demonstrations” for visitors that involve adult monkeys who have been abused and broken. PETA is calling on the Thai government to shut down these schools.
Baby monkeys cling to each other at a Thai coconut-picking school in this image from PETA’s investigative footage.
In his letter to the prime minister, Mike White points out that in these horrific schools, “[b]aby monkeys, who have been torn away from their mothers and are deprived of everything that’s natural and important to them, are “broken” and forced to serve as coconut picking machines for the rest of their lives.” White also warns that “[t]he world is watching, and if the Thai coconut industry doesn’t end its use of monkeys, it will continue to be shunned in favor of cruelty-free coconut milk from countries that don’t use monkey labor”.
A copy of Mike White’s letter can be seen here.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
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