On Monday, July 31, 2023, Lady Freethinker along with 19 other animal protection organizations sent a joint letter to top Meta officials urging the company to take action regarding baby monkey torture videos posted on their platform Facebook.
The letter points out that despite multiple meetings between Meta and members of the Social Media Animal Cruelty Coalition (SMACC), videos continue spreading on Facebook that show baby macaques being tortured, mutilated, burned, and killed. Some of the pages have thousands of followers, and the level of torture has only escalated since SMACC’s first contact with Meta.
You can read the full letter here.
Meta has not yet responded to Lady Freethinker regarding the letter.
Online monkey torture also was the focus of a recent BBC documentary, The Monkey Haters, which highlights the use of social media in a global monkey torture ring that was producing, sharing, and selling torture content spanning from Indonesia to the United States. Lady Freethinker, along with Action for Primates, helped with the investigation and the documentary by providing information.
Unfortunately, the torture and violence inflicted on baby monkeys has escalated in the US and UK as videos proliferate. Disturbingly, these graphic and depraved videos also are circulated and posted on social media platforms, in particular on Facebook, making them easily available for others, including children, to access and view. Some social media users also have advertised private video services for those wanting more gruesome violence.
Some of the torment, torture, and death inflicted on baby monkeys involved abusers:
- cutting off a monkey’s ear using scissors
- physically beating a monkey into submission
- setting fire to a baby monkey whose legs were bound and hands were tied
- cutting off a monkey’s finger with a knife
- piercing monkeys’ ears, noses, tongues, and eyelids with hat pins
- tying infant monkeys to objects and beating them
- hanging a monkey by his scrotum and penis and submerging him in ice-filled water
- cutting off the arm of an infant monkey, beating the infant with the severed arm, then cutting the infant’s throat
“I am shocked and disappointed that this egregious violence toward animals remains online while Meta appears seemingly indifferent to our repeated pleas,” said Nina Jackel, founder and president of Lady Freethinker. “The time is long overdue for Meta to take a stand against cruelty through meaningful action to remove and prevent these animal torture videos from circulating on Facebook.”
It’s crucial that Meta take immediate action to ensure videos showing animals being tortured and killed aren’t posted or spread across its platform.
LFT is urging everyone to sign their petition if they haven’t already and to share it with their friends and family.
