Blame the ugly tradition of zoos for Harambe the gorilla’s killing
Eleni Panagiotarakou says there is simply no justification for keeping wild animals captive, following the shooting at Cincinnati zoo that has stirred public outrage
The story of Harambe, the male western lowland gorilla who was killed at the Cincinnati zoo on May 28 after a three-year-old boy entered his enclosure, has taken the internet by storm.
Similar to the killing of Cecil the lion, the death of Harambe has generated a mixture of grief, anger and suspended indignation.
‘Justice for Harambe’: Outrage at killing of gorilla after four-year-old boy falls into his enclosure at zoo
Grief at the senseless death of a magnificent, endangered animal; anger towards the mother of the young boy, who is accused of being a negligent parent; and suspended indignation towards the zoo director who continued to justify his decision in the language of tragic, binary necessity – if Harambe was not killed, he would have killed the boy.
Faced with such a choice, only misanthropes would dare claim that the life of a non-human animal (even an endangered one) is more valuable than that of a human child.
However, it never had to come to that – not if the Cincinnati zoo did not exist.