Wonders shall never end, group ask court to recognise chimps as humans

NEW YORK (AFP) – Walking, talking chimpanzees
may be TV comedy gold but now three courts in
New York are being asked to recognize four chimps
as “legal persons” with fundamental rights.
The move would allow the animals to be released
into sanctuaries where they could live out the
reminder of their days in freedom, says the
Nonhuman Rights Project behind the initiative.
On Monday it petitioned a court in Fulton County
Court, New York State, in the name of Tommy, a
chimpanzee held captive in a cage at a used trailer
lot in nearby Gloversville.
On Tuesday it did the same for Kiko, a 26-year-old
chimpanzee who is deaf and living in a private
home in Niagara Falls.
The group will Thursday lodge a similar petition on
behalf of Hercules and Leo, who are owned by a
research center and used in locomotion
experiments on Long Island.
“The lawsuits ask the judge to grant the
chimpanzees the right to bodily liberty and to order
that they be moved to a sanctuary,” the organization
said in a statement.
There the animals can live out their days in an
environment as close to the wild as is possible in
North America, it added.
The challenge is based on the principle of habeas
corpus, which the petitioners said was used in New
York and allowed slaves to challenge their status
and establish their right to freedom.
Under habeas corpus, a person being held captive
can petition a judge to have the captors explain why
they think they have the right to hold that person.
“Our legal petitions and memoranda, along with
affidavits from some of the world’s most respected
scientists, lay out a clear case as to why these
cognitively complex, autonomous beings have the
basic legal right to not be imprisoned,” the
statement added.
The courts can decide whether or not to take up the
petitions but if they refuse the organization has the
right of appeal.
The Nonhuman Rights Project works to change the
common law status of at least some animals to
“persons” who possess fundamental rights such as
bodily integrity and bodily liberty.
The organization’s web site features what it calls
bios of the four chimps at the center of the lawsuit.
It said that the day its investigators visited the
chimp named Tommy, the temperature in the shed
was about 40 degrees below what it would be in his
native land.
“The only company he had was a TV that was left
on for him at the other side of the shed,” the
organization said.
As for the one called Kiko, the Nonhuman Rights
Project said he is partially or totally deaf because of
abuse he suffered while on the set of a Tarzan
movie before being acquired by the current owners.
“He suffers from an inner ear condition that
requires him to take anti-motion sickness
medication from time to time especially during
changes in barometric pressure,” the group’s web
site says.