Libero.id - Brilio.net/en - A video to warm the hearts of all animal lovers. The street monkeys of Jakarta are getting a second chance at a life in their natural habitat at the Jakarta Quarentine Center. The macaque monkeys have been nourished back to health, after suffering from a variety of human inflicted disease such as malnutrition, dehydration, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. The end goal is for the monkeys to be rereleased into their native Java, where they were takes as small infants and deprived their natural lives in order to be used as street performers in Jakarta.
Thankfully, Jakarta banned the horrid practice of allowing the performance animals to be displayed on the streets. Always in chains and often wearing masks and forced to entertain streetgoers, the animals were subjugated to riding bicycles and walking on stilts. As of 2013, ownership of the monkeys is in violation of a criminal code on animal abuse. Hopefully other districts in Indonesia will follow suit and end the sad practice.
The effort to ban the practice was led by the Jakarta Animal Aid Network, who lobbied for five years to ban the practice. Furthermore, the government offered monetary incentives for the modern day slave owners if they returned the monkeys. Furthermore, photographers around the world captured the harrowing moments of animal abuse. Finnish photographer Perttu Saksa travelled to Indonesia in 2012 and was able to capture the “actors” in a deep and disturbing light, that left chills with many. Bound by chains and peering behind broken children’s dolls, the animals looks broken and exemplify one of the greatest human fears – being enslaved and stripped of free will.
Image: Perttu Saksa
These eerie images will soon be a history in Jakarta, and hopefully in all of Indonesia and globally as well.
In 2015 the Jakarta Animal Aid Network successfully released 62 of the monkeys into nature reserves, after they had undergone years of training to learn how to cohabitate with other monkeys and forage for food and defend themselves against predators.
At least one predator won’t be of bother any more.
Image: Perttu Saksa
Opini