We must save the primates

It’s
been 10 years since One Voice began a strong campaign of resistance
to the exponential growth of primate trafficking from Cambodia to the
European market. Our involvement in this fight will soon pass a
quarter century and our determination remains intact and assiduous.
Our first victories are only the beginning for those to come.

Starting in Cambodia, our investigation denounces all international traffic

When
in 2008, the centre of primatology Niederhausbergen, Alsace, imported
monkeys from a breeding centre in Cambodia, Muriel Arnal, president
of our association, sent investigators into this country to bring
back images on the conditions of these captive animals. These
traumatic videos bring us closer to the horror, the pain that
emanates from them. Whatever our position on animal welfare, how can
we not feel anger at so much suffering? How not to feel helpless in
front of these mums who try to protect their little ones to hide them
from the intrusive eye of the camera? How do you make them understand
that we are here to testify, and help them? One Voice refuses to let
this pass in silence, our association has highlighted this urgency
with a new resistance campaign started back in 2009. We must again
today highlight this ceaseless and vital struggle for our primate
cousins.

At
the beginning of this year, we learn that China has just cloned five monkeys from a macaque’s modified genes with sleep disorders – one
is dead and the others are suffering from serious pathologies,
anxiety, depression, schizophrenia – it is high time to give this
fight a new impetus.

More than two decades of struggle, we must continue the fight

Taken
from their mother’s arms, captured in the wild, raised in cages or
cloned, thousands of young primates live the worst of anxieties. It
is essential that animal rights activists around the world awaken
their sleeping consciences. We who, since the 90’s, are taking action
with our partner, the BUAV (British Union Against Vivisection), we
must remember that tenacity can give results. In 1996, we legally
rescued 36 crab-eating macaques from a laboratory. They were placed
in the L’Arche Refuge. That same year, we blocked the project of the
largest breeding centre of primates in Europe (Holtzheim in Alsace).
In 2003 the campaign “Air France-Air suffering” began.

As
in 2009, we must resume an emergency campaign for new resistance to
the growing international trade in primates for research.

Despicable and shameful, because they resemble us

Every
year in the world, more than 100,000 monkeys and apes are used for
biomedical research. Primates are very intelligent animals, with
complex social behaviours. They feel pain and suffering, just like
humans. Researchers take advantage of these characteristics to
conduct various experiments on them.

But
their suffering begins well before arriving in the laboratories. In
1991, the BUAV survey revealed a very high mortality rate amongst
monkeys caught in the wild (8 out of 10 primates die before reaching
the laboratories). The investigators were able to highlight the
cruelty exerted on the captured primates, held in narrow and
overcrowded cages in detention centres, and in aircraft holds.

In
order to remove all humanity from these transactions, the actors of
this traffic hide the monkeys under the acronym PNH, Primates
Non-Human. How can we gather more than 550 species under such a cold
name? These primates are our cousins, our relatives, in their
diversity and their richness.

We refuse the use of primates, as with all living things used in research

This
information from China on the cloning of primates should push us to
put forward our values and our ethics on the defence of animal
rights.
We
refuse any form of vivisection.
We
refuse any beneficiation for anybody: traffickers, breeders,
laboratories, by the use of primates or animals whatever they are,
rodents, dogs or others, for commercial ends.
We
refuse to condone the trivialization of this exploitation in the
publication of writings that give good conscience to those who write
and disseminate them.

One
third of the primate species are in danger of extinction. For them,
we take this reality into account and continue our fight without
compromise.