{"id":757947,"date":"2019-08-14T08:13:23","date_gmt":"2019-08-14T12:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=757947"},"modified":"2019-08-14T08:13:23","modified_gmt":"2019-08-14T12:13:23","slug":"starving-elderly-elephants-emaciated-body-is-hidden-by-buddhist-festival-costume","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=757947","title":{"rendered":"Starving elderly elephant\u2019s emaciated body is hidden by Buddhist festival costume"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<blockquote  class=\"bs-quote bs-quote-1 bsq-t1 bsq-s1 bsq-left\">\n\t\t<div class=\"quote-content\">\n\t\t\t<p>No one sees the tears in her eyes, injured by the bright lights that decorate her mask, no one sees her difficulty to step as her legs are short shackled while she walks.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>JOE ROBERTS:<\/strong> <em>&#8216;A starving 70-year-old elephant is made to walk miles every night so people can feel \u2018blessed\u2019 at a religious festival, an activist has claimed. The ailing female elephant, who is called Tikiri, is covered in a colourful costume so the people watching her in the parade do not see her emaciated body. Lek Chailert, the founder of Save Elephant Foundation, said Tikiri is one of 60 elephants being forced to work for ten consecutive nights at the Esala Perahera, a Buddhist festival in Kandy, Sri Lanka. She claims the elephants are \u2018short shackled\u2019 so they walk slower through the noisy chaos of the night parade. Chailert, whose organisation rescues elephants in Thailand, said \u2018no one sees the tears\u2019 in Tikiri\u2019s eyes in a heartfelt post on World Elephant Day.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>She wrote: \u2018Tikiri joins in the parade early every evening until late at night every night for ten consecutive nights, amidst the noise, the fireworks, and smoke. \u2018She walks many kilometers every night so that people will feel blessed during the ceremony. No one sees her bony body or her weakened condition, because of her costume. \u2018No one sees the tears in her eyes, injured by the bright lights that decorate her mask, no one sees her difficulty to step as her legs are short shackled while she walks&#8217;.<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/metro.co.uk\/2019\/08\/13\/starving-elderly-elephants-emaciated-body-hidden-festival-costume-10561933\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>SOURCE&#8230;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED VIDEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MQFm_k1vwQI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JOE ROBERTS: &#8216;A starving 70-year-old elephant is made to walk miles every night so people can feel \u2018blessed\u2019 at a religious festival, an activist has claimed. The ailing female elephant, who is called Tikiri, is covered in a colourful costume so the people watching her in the parade do not see her emaciated body. Lek [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":757948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,22,23,25],"tags":[26,27,28,30,36,37],"class_list":["post-757947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-morality","category-rights","category-welfare","tag-compassion","tag-cruelty","tag-entertainment","tag-exploitation","tag-sentience","tag-speciesism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=757947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":757949,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/757947\/revisions\/757949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/757948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=757947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=757947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=757947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}