Cher recently made headlines when she managed to save the world’s ‘loneliest elephant’ from captivity in a Pakistani zoo. Now, it looks as though the award-winning singer has turned her attention to saving another animal from a life of misery.
Bua Noi is a female gorilla who has spent the last three decades of her life living in the private Pata Zoo, located on the 6th and 7th floors of Pata Pinklao Department Store in Bangkok. The zoo has been described as an ‘an animal prison on top of a shopping mall,‘ by Edwin Wiek, director of the Wildlife Friends Foundation, and has long been criticized for its mistreatment of animals.
After learning about the horrid conditions Bua Noi is living in, Cher wrote an open letter to Thailand’s environmental minister Varawut Silpa-archa, in which she expressed her ‘deep concern’ over the gorillas living conditions, along with the other animals at the Zoo, including a lone penguin and other primates, according to reports from The Washington Post.
Cher, along with Free the Wild, a charity organisation co-founded by the singer, has now offered to fund the transfer of Bua Noi to a sanctuary located in the Republic of the Congo which has been described as, ‘a home of peace and dignity where she could live out her life in a natural environment and companionship with other species”, by Cher in her open letter.
The Wildlife Friends Foundation of Thailand has also offered the other primates at the zoo, including orangutans, bonobo, and a gibbon, a forever home.
‘Good People Of Bangkok, I Know You Will Understand & Help Me Stop The Torturing Of Innocent Animals. It Is a Sin,’ Cher wrote in a Twitter post as she pleaded with the people of Bangkok to save the animals at Pata Zoo.
Good People Of Bangkok
I Know You Will Understand & Help Me Stop The Torturing Of
Innocent Animals. It Is a Sin.Please Help Me Bring Peace to these Animals.
&Free Them From Pata Zoo…Shopping Mall
Inshallah.
🙏🏽🙏🏼Namaste— Cher (@cher) December 6, 2020
Kanit Sermsirimongkol, owner of Pata Zoo has previously rubbished claims that animals were being mistreated at the facility. In February 2020, Sermsirimongkol told the Bangkok Post that Bua Noi’s concrete enclosure was designed to resemble a cave and that she had a ‘television for entertainment’.
When asked about the possibility of relocating Bua Noi, Sermsirimongkol said, ‘Want to send her back to nature? We should think about the animals’ quality of life in the jungle. They are under threat from diseases like Aids and Ebola, as well as civil wars and poachers.’
If you would like to show your support for Bua Noi, along with the other animals suffering at Pata Zoo, Click here to sign a petition to the Department of National Parks not to extend the Pata Zoo license in June.
Picture Twitter/ @FreeGorillaorg
