“She walks many kilometres every night so that people will feel blessed during the ceremony.”
Tourists in Sri Lanka have been urged to boycott religious parades because of concerns over the mistreatment of elephants. She was one of 60 animals made to march through the city of Kandy during the Esala Perahera, a ten-day Buddhist festival.
Her skeletal frame was hidden by a large costume. For ten days she works until late at night amid the noise, fireworks and smoke.“She walks many kilometres every night so that people will feel blessed during the ceremony,” said Lek Chailert, the founder of the Save Elephant Foundation, a Thai charity.“No one sees her difficulty to step as her legs are short-shackled while she walks.”She said that the exploitation of elephants was common at tourist traps across Sri Lanka.“They do so because mahouts [handlers] carry bullhooks — iron rods with a sharp hook — to dig into their flesh and other weapons that they learnt as babies to fear,” she said. “Tourists can help elephants by refusing to ride them and by avoiding any attraction that offers elephant rides, keeps the animals chained or forces them to perform,” she added. A spokesman for the Sacred Tooth Relic, the Buddhist temple that hosts the festival, said that Tikiiri had been seen by a vet.
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