Posted on 11/12/2017 10:25:15 PM PST by beaversmom
The back legs of the baby elephant are consumed by fire as it chases after its startled mother, screaming.
In the chilling photo, a flaming ball of tar...the source of the fire, along with a few hurled firecrackers — is frozen in the air as a crowd sprints away from the petrified pachyderms.
Many things in the photo are unclear: the fate of the calf and its mother, the reason the men are attacking them on a road cut through a forest, whether the practice has a formal name or is just a random bit of sadism.
But in an instant, the image — titled “Hell Is Here” and snapped by Biplab Hazra — has shined a light on some of the darkest moments of the conflict between humans and elephants in India, whose lives increasingly overlap in what will soon be the world’s most populous nation.
In his entry to Sanctuary Wildlife’s Photography awards, Hazra describes what happened when the mob met the large animals:
[The] calf screams in confusion and fear as the fire licks at her feet. Flaming tar balls and crackers fly through the air to a soundtrack of human laughter and shouts. In the Bankura district of West Bengal this sort of humiliation of pachyderms is routine, as it is in the other elephant-range states of Assam, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu and more.
Hazra’s photo won the top prize at the Sanctuary awards, which drew 5,000 entries from across Asia. Eight photographers were awarded prizes.
People even jeered at Hazra for snapping a photo of the elephant torture instead of doing something to help.
More than 60 percent of the world’s Asian elephants live in India as its human population balloons, spreading into migration routes and feeding grounds the animals have used for centuries.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Why anyone would go there as a tourist is beyond me.
I would not. I’d visit Israel, if I could. New Zealand. Canada. Places like that.
USHA: Don't go. India is a dreadful, dreadful place.
ZUBIN: You know, it's the only country that still has the plague? I mean, the plague! Please!
USHA: Here's the registry. Send her a gift, and be glad you did not have to go.
ELAINE: (Soaking it in) Right. Don't go. Send a gift. I think I understand.
ZUBIN: If I had to go to India, I wouldn't go to the bathroom the entire trip.
ELAINE: (Leaving) That's fantastic.
ZUBIN: And I'm not so crazy about Manhattan, either.
Indians. If they’re not raping their own women, they’re gang raping female tourists. If they’re not gang raping female tourists, they are polluting the air so badly that airlines now refuse to fly to their major cities. They swim in rivers strewn with corpses. And they try to set intelligent animals on FIRE! OMG, I’d have turned a rifle on those cowards. Look at them fleeing their filthy work. Damn them! Lower than a snake’s belly.
Humiliation??? What do elephants care about that? That is pure terror they are experiencing. Must be something that didn’t translate well.
I’ve been there twice for a total of 6 weeks. It is a fascinating place with many extremes...and with very pleasant people. The temples, fortifications, historic sites and much more are wonderful to experience. Like all countries, India has it challenges.
I knew a guy in college from Vietnam - was on one of the last choppers out as it fell.
During field camp he would go out and find rattlesnakes and kill them slowly - came back with their heads stuck in his hat. After he explained I told him not to let me see that again.
He said for fun they would catch a rats, cage them, put gas on them and light them on fire.
I get that they are snakes and rats - but to torture them like that is sick. And me - I just leave snakes alone.
That does explain why the occasional elephant tramples humans...
I’d hate to see what he does to his wife.
I looked up one state where the article said this sort of attack is common... Chhattisgarh state. I doubt the Maoists who kill police are any friendlier to elephants:
Maoists kill 50 Indian policemen, BBC ^ | Thursday, March 15, 2007 The Maoists launched a co-ordinated assault Maoist rebels have attacked a security post in central India, killing 50 police officers, police say.The attack, one of the worst in decades of insurgency, happened in the rebel stronghold area of Dantewada, in Chhattisgarh state.
The post I just abandoned may well have gotten me banned. What utterly disgusting, vile behavior. If the Mama Elephant had charged that bunch of losers and trampled them to death, though, they would have fully had it coming.
People who torture animals, often as not, eventually move on to torturing other people. Sick.
Interesting video. Spoiler alert below....
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At first with the smoke and fireworks I was wondering what was going on. And I was amazed at how calm and subdued the animal was during the process.
Reading the story, and seeing the video, I’m guessing it was already so drugged it didn’t suffer too much - I hope so. I have no idea if it really needed to be killed or not.
The description below the video states that, prior to the electrocution, the elephant was fed carrots laced with over a pound of cyanide.
I am reminded of the assassination of Grigori Rasputin, who was fed cakes and wine laced with cyanide, but ultimately had to be shot multiple times before being dumped into th Malaya Nevka River in St. Petersburg.
I have no idea if it really needed to be killed or not.
Supposedly, Topsy had killed one James Fielding Blount, a circus spectator / trespasser who harassed the elephant with a lit cigar on her trunk.
“Supposedly, Topsy had killed one James Fielding Blount, a circus spectator / trespasser who harassed the elephant with a lit cigar on her trunk.”
Yeah - I got that. Seems to me he had it coming. But that part about Topsy being a threat to all people after that - I suppose he might have been. My aunt’s dog hated all men - he was beaten by one. When I was a boy we had lots of fun and she was fine with me. I came home from college, was visiting and she growled and nipped at my heals!
As I understand it, Rasputin’s cause of death was drowning - the bullets didn’t even do it. May be an urban legend...
Rasputin was dead by time his body was dumped in the river.
That region is Hindu. In a country of 1 billion, life is cheap. And if they’re poor, animal life even more so. Except for cows.
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