An investigation by Action for Primates and Lady Freethinker has found a disturbing escalation of animal cruelty online around the globe.

Users of various online platforms such as YouTube and Facebook based in different parts of the world have set up a private online group.

The groups which can be found on platforms Forumotion and Telegram, are working with many people in Indonesia and South East Asia to facilitate monkey torture videos for payment and entertainment.

Monkey torture “watchers” are paying for monkeys such as the long-tailed macaques, including infants, to be abused, tortured and killed.

Types of Monkey Torture

The torture of these innocent animals includes (but is not limited to):

• cutting off a monkey’s ear using scissors
• physically beating monkeys into submission
• throwing a monkey into a water and mud filled hole
• using knives to cut fingers off of monkeys
• using hat pins to pierce the ears, noses, tongues and eyelids of monkeys
• tying a monkey’s arms behind his back followed by kicking him repeatedly in the face and forcing him under water repeatedly
• tying (‘spread-eagled’) infants to wooden platforms and then beating them with hands and branches
• setting a monkey on fire
• suspending monkeys by their genitals and beating them
• cutting off the arm of an infant monkey, beating infant with severed arm, then cutting throat to kill infant
• putting the monkey in a blender until death
• beating the monkey with a hammer or other blunt objects

The monkeys are typically captured and sold into captivity from the Indonesian island of Java. The people carrying out the abuse and murder do it for fun and money.

How Torture is Sold

The group will seek instructions on different types of animal abuse for different sums of money, then filming the torture to receive payments. Members of the group can pay for their ‘own private monkey’ to be filmed while being tortured through their chosen method.

The grotesque group even has several members make smaller contributions towards a US $150 fee for their ‘share’ of a community monkey. This allows members to put in requests for acts of cruelty and torture to be inflicted on this shared monkey and decide how their monkey is to be killed.

Lady Freethinker and Action for Primates have alerted US law enforcement and Indonesian authorities and urged them to take action against this monkey torture group and all its members.

The justice for primates group is also calling on social media and video sharing platforms to take immediate action to stop the proliferation of animal torture content that is being posted online.

Eliminate Animal Torture

Everyone has a duty to immediately report the animal abuse videos and individuals to the relevant channels and users to YouTube, Facebook, Forumotion and Telegram. Capture as much information as possible for authorities.

Those who are united in justice for animals urge these platforms to address this serious issue. Forumotion responded that they had banned animal abuse group on the the forum.

Also informing its creators that violating terms of service and breaking the law will be reported to police. The YouTube, Facebook and Telegram profiles remain active, to date of this posting.

Dr Nedim Buyukmihci, veterinarian and co-founder of Action for Primates, stated: As a veterinarian with many decades of experience, I have never witnessed the degree of sadism I have seen in these videos. What the people are doing to these infant monkeys is particularly vile and disturbing. No responsible company should tolerate the existence of such individuals and groups on their platforms, not only because of the appalling nature of the atrocities being inflicted upon non-human primates, but also because of the alarming implications for public health.