Steven Seagal Joins Fight To Stop Thailand’S Elephant Beatings

For Immediate Release:
7 February 2003

Contact:
Dawn Carr 020 7357 9229, ext. 244; [email protected]

Bangkok – International film star Steven Seagal—a long-time supporter of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)—whose credits include Marked for Death, Out for Justice and the box-office blockbuster Under Siege, has written to Pol. Lt. Col. Thaksin Shinawatra, the prime minister of Thailand, urging him to intervene to stop the systematic, widespread torture of baby elephants used as a draw by the country’s tourism industry. Seagal, a devoted Buddhist and humanitarian, has long admired the people, culture and religion of Thailand, visiting the country more than 100 times during the last 30 years. In fact, he’s currently filming a new movie in Thailand. He is also a songwriter and performer, a seventh-degree black belt aikido master and the first non-Asian to organise his own martial-arts school, or dojo, in Tokyo, which now enrols more than 2,000 students.

‘One hundred years ago in Thailand there were 150,000 elephants’, writes Seagal. ‘Today, there are only 5,000, the majority of whom are in private hands. For the sake of these endangered animals and your country’s reputation, I ask that you immediately enact laws to abolish their use and abuse by the entertainment industry.’

For more information, please visit HelpThaiElephants.com.