Why it is important that each of us sign the petition to save Riù, the “sad gorilla” of the Fasano Zoo

If you have had the misfortune to be taken or to have gone to the Fasano zoo, perhaps you too know the gorilla Riù. Riù is a majestic gorilla king of the forests who has lived his entire life in prison and slavery. He was captured in Kenya in 1975 together with little Pedro and sold to the Medrano circus. Then in 1994 the two gorillas were moved to the Apulian zoo and here locked up and shown to hordes of disrespectful tourists, with little space, displayed in the showcase as if they were objects. Pedro died in 2008 and since then, for 12 very long years, Riù has lived alone in a narrow space exposed to the looks and shouts of tourists. They call him the “sad gorilla,” and to see him is a pain for any sensitive heart.

Zoos, of any kind, even those for study or protection, or those that sell themselves as places where animals live free, are always and only places of confinement and humiliation for animals who live a life in cages far from any natural instinct. Terrible even for those who visit them, uneducational for children that in zoos they learn the concept that a living being can live in confinement by choice of others. It’s a certainty: the circus shouldn’t have animals (also in honor of the circus art), e zoos should all closepledging to find sanctuaries where to allow their animals a life, no longer free, but at least protected, in open spaces, away from prying eyes and together with their own kind.

Many years ago, when I was very young, convinced by friends who said that the Fasano Zoo, being a «safari», was a park where small free animals lived, I visited the zoo. It was the last zoo or aquarium I visited. At that time the two gorillas were on a small round patch of grass in a cavea exposed to the public. The tourists were screaming, pointing at them, a boy made a gesture of pounding his chest with his fists in the direction of the gorillas, and one of them reacted, running as if to attack him in the small space up to the edge, and then retreating with a sad look that still returns. to my memory and grounds my shame for mankind, and for a society – all of us – myself included – that allows all of this. Maybe that gorilla was Riù, maybe it was Pedro who later died, probably full of all that pain.

This is why it is important to sign the petition of the Meta Association of Parma, for Riù, so that he may be able to spend the last years of his life in a better place, and may die in peace. And for all of us, as an apology to this heartless humanity of which we call ourselves citizenswithout understanding that the ruthlessness we turn towards animals is the one we experience every day and that hurts us too.