TripAdvisor urged to bar Thrissur Pooram

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Attempts to end, or at least minimise, the torture of elephants during Thrissur Pooram had consistently failed. Even a Supreme Court order in May 2015 had fallen on deaf ears. Now, with internet travel giant TripAdvisor declaring that it will not sell tickets to tourism destinations that are considered cruel towards animals, the State Animal Welfare Board and animal activists are preparing a case to get Thrissur Pooram blacklisted as a tourist attraction.

The state’s foremost animal activist, V. K. Venkitachalam, has already shot off a missive, complete with photographs, to TripAdvisor CEO Stepfen Kaufer. Venkitachalam, who runs Heritage Animal Task Force, has a collection of photographs, taken secretly over the years, that reveals the unspeakable sufferings imposed on the elephant in the name of Thrissur Pooram.

There are pictures that prove his charge that Thiruvambadi temple in Thrissur uses elephants that were blinded by their mahouts. He also has graphic images of elephants chained at the festival ground last year, their skin torn apart in the lower part of their legs as a result of the constant scraping of the iron chain and their backs battered by mahouts into minor craters.

The state Animal Welfare Board, too, will petition TripAdvisor against Thrissur Pooram. “The pooram is more a festival of torture. It subjects these beasts to not just physical torture but also to intolerable pyrotechnics,” said M N Jayachandran, Board member. The Board, too,had documented the torture during the last festival. The documentary 'God in Shackles' by Canada-based filmmaker Sangita Iyer, which films tortured elephants at Thirussur Pooram and temples associated with it, has already exposed the travelling world to the torture.

Venkitachalam said that the state was generally insensitive to the plight of captive elephants. “As per the RTI information we have received, Kerala's temples and temple trusts and churches keep 393 captive elephant without having any statutory ownership certificates,” Venkitachalam said in his missive to Kaufer. “But the State Government has not initiated any penal action against the persons who keep and torture 393 elephants after capturing them from the wild illegally,” he added.