PETA Asia Senior Vice President Jason Baker, his 11-year-old son, and PETA Foundation U.K. Campaign Leader Reuben Skeats have been deported after imprisoned for more than 25 hours in Addis Ababa. They were arrested while scouting for a future demonstration location at the Ethiopian Airlines ticket office on Churchill Street.
The trio had been planning to stage a protest outside the airline’s headquarters, wearing prison uniforms and monkey masks to demand that Ethiopian Airlines stop shipping endangered monkeys to laboratories in the United States where they are “mutilated, tormented, and ultimately killed.”
In a statement sent from jail, Jason Baker, the PETA Asia SVP, said “We’ve been held here overnight simply for speaking up for monkeys who are suffering because Ethiopian Airlines ships them to laboratories in the U.S. The real crime is what’s being done to these monkeys. Being detained in a cell isn’t fun, but it’s nothing compared to what the monkeys just a few miles down the road at the airport are subjected to—which will only get worse when they’re imprisoned in U.S. laboratories. I would do this again to help them.”
