Monkey abuse investigated
A baby monkey struggles and squirms as it tries to escape the man holding it by the neck over a concrete cistern, repeatedly dousing it with water.
In another video clip, a person plays with the genitals of a juvenile male macaque sitting on a limestone block from an ancient temple to get it excited for the camera.
The abuse of monkeys at the Angkor UNESCO World Heritage Site in Cambodia is not always so graphic, but authorities say it is a growing problem.
“The monkey should be living in the wild,” said Long Kosal, spokesperson for APSARA, the Cambodian of- fice that oversees the Angkor archaeological site.
APSARA has opened an investigation with the Min- istry of Agriculture to collect evidence for legal action against the most serious abusers — who are rarely on camera themselves, Long Kosal said.
YouTube, Facebook and other sites remove the vid- eos with graphic content, but scores of other clips of cute monkeys jumping and playing remain, generating thousands of views and subscribers.
Just making those videos involves very close inter- action with the monkeys, however, which authorities and animal-rights activists say creates a host of other problems, both for the macaques and people visiting one of Southeast Asia’s most popular tourist sites.
On a recent day outside Angkor’s famous 12th-centu- ry Bayon Temple, at least a dozen YouTubers crowded around a small group of long-tailed macaques, pushing in close to get shots of a mother with a baby on her back and tracking her everywhere she moved. The wild monkeys feasted on bananas tossed to them by You- Tubers and drank from plastic bottles of water.
Simply taking video of monkeys is OK, even though feeding them is frowned upon. At the same time, it’s making them dependent upon handouts, and the close interaction with humans means they’re increasingly becoming aggressive toward tourists.
“The tourists carry their food, and they would snatch the food,” Long Kosal said, flipping through photos on his phone of recent injuries caused by macaques. “If the tourists resist, they bite and this is very dangerous.”
YouTuber Ium Daro, who started filming Angkor monkeys about three months ago, followed a mother and a baby along a dirt path with his iPhone held on a selfie stick to get in close. “The monkeys here are friendly,” said Daro, 41. “After we take their pictures we give them food, so it is like we pay them for them giving us the chance to take their picture.”
Phut Phu said he started filming monkeys 2 1/2 years ago when he was looking for a job in the open air to help him deal with a lung problem. “I need these monkeys,” said Phu, 24, who works as a salaried employees of YouTube page operators.