Lechmee, Mina and Kamala go on tour!

Friday, April 6th, following the launch of a video in which Lechmee, Mina and Kamala are forced to follow their trainer, with ankus in hand, in the streets of Rambervillers in Lorraine, we have lodged a complaint for ill-treatment, this one is added to our previous complaint in progress, and we ask the Prefecture to withdraw them from the circus.

Will this continue until they die?

The three friends will have to travel 1,862 kilometres in sixty-one days! For Lechmee, it will probably be the trip too much. With her right front foot paralyzed, she will suffer in hell once again. When walking on concrete, her pain is already intense. We see her always place her stiff foot with infinite care. But once in the truck, the suffering comes from the ground. Locked up for hours in her dark trailer, Lechmee must remain standing on a metal floor. Constantly, she must restore her balance during turning, braking or acceleration. Every pothole, every bump in the asphalt, every stone on the small provincial roads inflicts flashes of pain that go right up to her shoulder.

Lechmee is blind

Her poor eyes cannot see anything around her, not even the hay that Mina gently stuffs in her mouth. But she still hears, that hearing which is so sensitive to elephants, and it is a world of noise and turmoil that surrounds her. Every morning the caravan arrives in a village. Parade, the menagerie open to visitors, announcements shouted into the microphone, thunderous music precedes the show, always the same and repeated in each city. Mina and Kamala are old and tired too, but not enough in the eyes of the circus.

Their performance is not very long, a quarter of an hour. This will be their only physical exercise of the day, over the same sequence of unnatural poses. Lechmee waits for them behind the scenes, dancing on the spot, waving her trunk in solitary delirium. She listens to the lashes and cries of her friends on the track when they sit on their ridiculous stools under the laughter of children.

The show finished and the lights off, the circus dismantles its tent.

One cleans thoroughly with water, one pushes the restive animals into their rolling cage and immediately the caravan leaves. From Sarreguemines to Toul, 146 km. From Toul to Metz, 74 km. From Metz to Épinal, 129 km. From Belfort to Besançon, 93 km of bumpy roads. Rarely, the circus lingers more than one day on the same spot, except in Marseilles where its journey ends. For more than forty years Lechmee has been subjected to this gruelling routine lead by the blows from the ankus, but she has never suffered as much as she does today.

But for the circus, everything is fine.

The distress of these three elephants would be another lie to harm the "traditional" circus. Yet the veterinary reports are there, the images are there, which claim that this cruel life should no longer be that for the three elephants. One Voice is outraged by the cynicism of this company, which denies the obvious to protect its interests. One Voice demands that Lechmee, Mina and Kamala be immediately removed from this current tour and placed in a shelter, waiting then to reach their sanctuary in Limousin.