Why Did ‘The White Lotus’ Creator Send a Letter to the Thai Government?
After Mike White finished filming the third season of his highly anticipated Emmy Award–winning HBO series The White Lotus in Thailand, PETA US sent the auteur undercover footage of baby monkeys chained up at coconut-picking schools in the country. The esteemed creator dropped everything to write to the Thai government. In his letter to Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, he urged compassion for the endangered, vulnerable baby monkeys exploited by the Thai coconut industry.
I have just finished filming season three of The White Lotus on Samui. It’s a beautiful place, but I was shocked to learn from my friends at [PETA US] that there and elsewhere in Thailand, monkeys are forced to work for the coconut industry. I urge you to end this exploitation of our fellow primates and ensure that Thailand’s entire coconut industry transitions to humane harvesting methods that don’t rely on forced monkey labour.
Baby Monkeys Chained and Isolated, Their Spirits Broken, Inside ‘School of Horrors’
PETA’s brand-new exposé of monkey-training schools takes viewers inside the facilities that force endangered, vulnerable baby pig-tailed macaques to pick coconuts.
Investigators witnessed social, sensitive monkeys – who were just months old – all alone and tethered on ropes so short they could barely move. In their natural habitat, pig-tailed macaques often stay with their nurturing mothers for years.
They live in large, complex social groups in which they forage, sleep, and eat together. At Thailand’s coconut-picking schools, investigators documented baby monkeys desperately clinging to each other for comfort. Monkeys paced neurotically, and some ran frantically while attached to tethers – resulting in them repeatedly choking on their collars and their tiny necks being twisted.
In his letter to the prime minister, White described what is done in these horrific schools: “Baby monkeys, who have been torn away from their mothers and are deprived of everything that’s natural and important to them, are ‘broken’ and forced to serve as coconut-picking machines for the rest of their lives. Undercover video footage acquired from these ‘schools’ reveals traumatised and terrified infants who have been bred in captivity or abducted from their jungle homes and families.”
These facilities – which are promoted to tourists on the Thai government’s website – put on deceptive coconut-picking demonstrations for visitors that involve adult monkeys whose spirits have been crushed as a result of abuse.
Join White in Speaking Out Against Monkey Abuse
This latest exposé reveals how a lifetime at the end of a chain starts for baby monkeys exploited by the Thai coconut industry. You can take action for these endangered, vulnerable animals by urging the Thai government to shut down coconut-picking schools and ban monkey labour today:
