New Video Exposé Shows Camels Badly Beaten for Egyptian Tourism

For Immediate Release:
March 30, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

As people make their travel plans for 2023—with post-pandemic tourism in Egypt growing more than 60% from 2021 to 2022—a new video exposé from PETA Asia shows that camels used for rides at the Great Pyramid of Giza and other top Egyptian tourist attractions are beaten bloody, prodded, yanked, tugged by the nose, and tied up and forced to walk on their knees.

The video was taken in Birqash Camel Market, the chief supplier of camels to the Egyptian tourism industry. It shows camels with bloody faces and men repeatedly whipping and hitting the animals as they scream. The animals’ legs are tied tightly together to prevent them from moving or escaping, and some camels are tied to the backs of vehicles and dragged through the dirt. When their bodies are too worn out to use for rides, they’re sold to be killed for meat.

“Behind every camel-ride photo posted online is a hideously violent trade that leaves camels beaten and bloodied before ultimately sending them to slaughter,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA urges every traveler to leave animal rides off their itineraries in Egypt and worldwide.”

PETA Asia is calling on the governor of Giza to investigate the traders who have been caught abusing the camels at the market and for the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities to remove animal rides from the Great Pyramid of Giza.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.