Cruelty for clicks: Cambodia is investigating YouTubers' abuse of monkeys at the Angkor UNESCO site

(9 Apr 2024)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4487607

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Siem Reap, Cambodia - 3 April 2024
1. Various of YouTuber following monkey and baby monkey with phone camera
2. Various of YouTuber feeding monkey

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Siem Reap, Cambodia - 1 April 2024
SOUNDBITE (English) Long Kosal, APSARA Deputy Director General ++PART OVERLAID WITH SHOT 2++
“The YouTubers, they produce content relating to the activities of the monkeys and they have fed the monkeys with food, whereas the monkeys should be left alone, whereas the monkey should be living in the

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Siem Reap, Cambodia - 3 April 2024
3. YouTuber Vorn Soviet giving water to monkey
4. Various of YouTubers around tree filming monkey
SOUNDBITE (Khmer) Vorn Soviet, YouTuber ++PART OVERLAID WITH SHOT 4++
“I have never heard that these monkeys have been abused by anyone. And I, myself have never harmed these monkeys because I film them in the jungle. But perhaps there was a misunderstanding when they (authorities) saw us holding a stick to scare the monkeys and chase them away when they were intentionally attacking or hanging on to tourists. This action could cause confusion.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Siem Reap, Cambodia - 1 April 2024
SOUNDBITE (English) Long Kosal, APSARA Deputy Director General:
“This is the problem for us. We need to find solid reasons in which we can use against them to prevent them not to make content by abusing the monkey.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Siem Reap, Cambodia - 2 April 2024
5. Various of monkey in front of Angkor Wat temple

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Phnom Penh, Cambodia - 2 April 2024
SOUNDBITE (English) Nick Marx, director of wildlife rescue and care for the Wildlife Alliance ++PART OVERLAID WITH SHOT 5++
“The issue that seems to me to be the biggest problem is these are generated to make money and if people that don’t like this kind of thing would stop watching them, that would really help solve the problem of abuse.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Siem Reap, Cambodia - 2 April 2024
6. Monkey in front of Angkor Wat temple
STORYLINE:
Outside Angkor's famous 12th-century Bayon Temple on a recent day, at least a dozen YouTubers, all young men, crowded around a small group of long-tailed macaques, pushing in close to get shots of a mother with a baby on her back and tracking her everywhere she moved.

The wild monkeys feasted on bananas tossed to them by the YouTubers, and drank from plastic bottles of water. One young macaque briefly amused itself with half-eaten neon-green popsicle discarded at the side of the path, before dropping it to move on to a banana.

A blue-shirted warden looked on but those filming were unfazed, illustrating the main problem: simply taking video of monkeys is OK, even though feeding them is frowned upon. At the same time, it's making them dependent upon handouts and the close interaction with humans means they're increasingly becoming aggressive toward tourists.

Authorities say monkey-related content and treatment of the animals is a growing problem as people look for new ways to draw online viewers to generate cash.

“The monkey should be living in the wild, where they are supposed to be living, but the monkey nowadays is being treated like a domestic pet,” said Long Kosal, spokesperson for APSARA, the Cambodian office that oversees the Angkor archaeological site.

“They're making the content to earn money by having the viewers on YouTube, so this is a very big issue for us.”






“The biggest problem is these (videos) are generated to make money,” he said in an interview from Phnom Penh.




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