What's Behind Elephant Painting

Save Elephant Foundation's Founder, Lek Chailert explains the tragic process behind making elephants paint for touristsTHE TRAGIC PROCESS BEHIND MAKING ELEPHANTS PAINT FOR TOURISTS. Please also see our video on the important work of Save Elephant Foundation and ways you can help:
• Elephant Rescue And Sa...
The audio is an excerpt from the BBC Radio 4 Programme 'The Conversation', as indicated in the first frame of the video you see here.
TRANSCRIPT: Lek Chailert on Elephant Painting
"We open our Park free for the Thai people. And we invite many schools. We send a letter to them. And some schools ask do you have elephant painting there? And we say, “no.” “Oh, too bad, we want our kids to see elephants painting.” You know, many industries that use elephants, painting, dancing, performing, and every elephant, the baby is separated from the mother, we call this Phajaan. Phajaan means make them forget each other. But when they take the baby into the training crush, they will tie the trunk, they tie the tail, they have lost the freedom. When it goes into the crush, 15 minutes after it’s lost the freedom, the elephant completely has an emotional problem, so they have diarrhea, they will pee non-stop, some of them even pee with blood. Then the next step, train the baby elephant to paint. They train the baby elephant to paint mountains, paint the house, they will sell the picture at auction. The baby elephants are so depressed. And many of them have mental problems. Because during their training they are completely soaking with blood. Some of the trainers use five ends of the nail, stabbing inside the ear, they’re screaming. So when they start to paint it means they are afraid of the pain. They do it because they want to survive. They use painting to draw the tourists to visit to the circus."