PETITION TARGET: Telegram CEO Pavel Durov
This is a joint campaign by Lady Freethinker and Action for Primates.
Videos showing extreme cruelty to baby monkeys are spreading rapidly on social media – especially Telegram, a popular encrypted messaging service.
In 2021, Lady Freethinker published a report in partnership with Action for Primates on one of the first big private monkey hater groups on Telegram – Milliontears.
An anonymous source shared videos and screenshots of chats from group members, who claim to have paid for macaques, including babies, to be abused, tortured, and killed on camera.
In another group called Ape’s Cage, videos showed baby monkeys being put into blenders, drilled with power tools, and deliberately drowned, while users voted on which weapons they wanted used on monkeys in future videos.
Since then, countless other groups have formed on Telegram to buy, sell, and share videos of horrifically gruesome acts of baby monkeys being tortured in unspeakable ways.
Telegram recently told BBC News that it was “committed to protecting user privacy and human rights such as freedom of speech” and that moderators “cannot proactively patrol private groups.”
As long as Telegram is complicit and complacent with the horrific cruelty that is posted and shared on its platform, animals will continue to be tortured and killed. The platform’s leadership must act now to stop this hideous and violent content from being posted.
Please sign our petition urging Telegram to take action against this horrifying trend of violence, ban animal cruelty groups on the platform, and remove any existing content and users promoting animal torture or abuse.
