re: "Mall zoo prices Thailand's last caged gorilla at B30m" (BP, October 21, 2022)
Dear editor,
Whilst legally sound, the argument from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment regarding Bua Noi, the gorilla held captive in solitary confinement at the Pata Pinklao Department Store for many years, that they "could not take any action other than buy the giant ape, because the gorilla was private property" bought before Thailand signed up to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), under which such a purchase would now be illegal, ignores justice and the wider moral issues at stake.
Prior to 1860, it was also legal to own human beings throughout most of the United States of America. That legal fact did not stop President Lincoln emancipating much, albeit not all, of that private property on January 1, 1863. With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution on December 6, 1865, all slave property in the US was freed, irrespective of the fact that they had until that date been legally owned private property.
It is indefensible to continue what has subsequently come to be recognized as a great injustice merely because the law once blessed such wrongs. We now understand that Bua Noi should never have been subjected to the inhumane treatment she has legally suffered. Had Bua Noi's human owners any sense of decency, they would themselves have moved her to a decent situation many years ago rather than extracting every last baht they could by turning her misery into a public entertainment. Plainly, they have not and will not.
Bua Noi is owed amends from those who have so abused her, and it can be no injustice to amend the law to correct the historic wrong committed. It can, on the contrary, only aggravate that injustice to continue to protect it by law that fails to respect an evolving moral understanding.
Felix Qui
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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.
The text as edited was published in PostBag on October 26, 2022, under the title "Legal versus moral" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2422763/legal-versus-moral
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