Photos: Protesters Push Crate of Shrieking ‘Monkeys’, Stun Passengers at Gatwick Airport
15 Oct 2024
Photos: Protesters Push Crate of Shrieking ‘Monkeys’, Stun Passengers at Gatwick Airport
London – Today, passengers waiting to check their luggage at London Gatwick Airport’s North Terminal got a surprise when two PETA “monkey transporters” in hazmat suits wheeled a wooden crate of shrieking “monkeys” to the Ethiopian Airlines baggage check-in area. A fellow activist held a sign reading, “Ethiopian Airlines: Stop Shipping Monkeys for Deadly Experiments,” to alert travellers to the airline’s gruesome role in the torture and death of endangered monkeys.
Images are also available here, and footage is available here.
The airline, which appears to have ties to an alleged illegal international monkey-smuggling ring, has flown thousands of monkeys from Mauritius and Southeast Asia in the cargo holds of passenger aeroplanes, even though it previously told PETA US that the company had a policy against the practice. The animals are destined for US laboratories, where they will be mutilated and maimed in painful experiments.
“Ethiopian Airlines subjects monkeys to appalling conditions in its cargo holds and risks public health in the process,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA urges the company to join nearly every other airline in the world and get out of the cruel and deadly monkey trade.”
Monkeys imported into the US are torn away from their families, shoved into the cargo holds of planes, and flown around the globe to be used in cruel experiments that don’t help humans. The animals also pose a health risk to humans. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged that in the past three years, imported monkeys have carried deadly diseases and pathogens, including tuberculosis and a dangerous bacterium that’s classified as a bioterrorism agent.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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