Thai police have charged a mahout after an elephant in his care gored a Spanish vacationer to dying final week.
Theerayut Inthaphudkij, 38, was charged with negligence inflicting dying, native authorities mentioned Monday.
The vacationer – 22-year-old Blanca Ojanguren García – was bathing the elephant on the Koh Yao Elephant Care Centre in southern Thailand when she was attacked by the animal.
This has renewed considerations over Thailand’s booming elephant tourism business, which animal rights teams have lengthy criticised as unethical and harmful.
Activists say that elephant bathing is disruptive to pure grooming behaviours and will injure the animals, exposing them to pointless stress.
After the assault, specialists weighed in to say that the elephant may need been pressured due to the interplay with vacationers.
García sustained a head damage – and later died within the hospital – after the elephant, 45-year-old feminine Phang Somboon, pushed her with its tusk. Her boyfriend, who was travelling along with her, witnessed the assault.
There are almost 3,000 elephants held in vacationer points of interest throughout Thailand, in response to an estimate by worldwide charity World Animal Safety.
Folks for the Moral Therapy of Animals (Peta) instructed the PJ in a press release that “such incidents spotlight the hazards to each people and animals alike.”
“Any ‘sanctuary’ that permits people to the touch, feed, bathe, or intently work together with elephants in any manner is not any place of refuge for elephants and places the lives of vacationers and animals in essential hazard,” mentioned Peta senior vice chairman Jason Baker.
Related expenses of negligence have beforehand been pressed towards mahouts whose elephants killed vacationers.
In 2017, an elephant camp proprietor and a mahout had been charged with recklessness inflicting dying and accidents after an elephant killed a Chinese language tour information and injured two vacationers within the Thai seashore city, Pattaya. In 2013, a 27-year-old elephant had its tusks minimize after it attacked and killed a girl.
García, a legislation and worldwide relations scholar at Spain’s College of Navarra, was dwelling in Taiwan as a part of a scholar alternate programme. She and her boyfriend arrived in Thailand on 26 December 2024.
Spain’s international minister, Jose Manuel Albares, mentioned the Spanish consulate in Bangkok was aiding García’s household.
Extra reporting by Kelly Ng
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, 2025-01-08 04:51:00
