Indian-American activist who yelled at Jeff Bezos arrested

PTI, Jun 8, 2019, 1:41 PM IST

New York: Indian-American activist Priya Sawhney, who interrupted Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ on-stage talk, has been arrested on trespassing and burglary charges, according to media reports.

Sawhney, 30, rushed on stage during Amazon’s “re:MARS” event here on Thursday and asked Bezos to do something about “chicken farms”.

Sawhney evaded event security, as well as some of Bezos’ personal detail, which costs a reported USD 1.6 million per year, the BBC reported.

“You are the world’s richest man. You’re the President of Amazon and you can help the animals,” shouted Sawhney, asking Bezos to stop the abuses of animals in California farms, the report said.

The security guards quickly surrounded her and took her away.

Bezos and Jenny Freshwater, another Amazon executive on stage at the time, sat calmly as the woman was removed.

A judge in Las Vegas says a California animal rights activist can be freed from jail without bail pending her next court date on felony charges for approaching Bezos, the world’s richest man, on a conference stage, according to a media report.

Sawhney is due again in court July 15 on false identification and burglary charges. In Nevada, burglary relates to entering a building with intent to commit a felony, the report said.

Sawhney is co-founder of Direct Action Everywhere (DXE), an international grassroots network of animal rights activists founded in 2013 in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Direct Action Everywhere animal rights group said it was protesting against what it claims is poor treatment of chickens at a farm in Petaluma Poultry, a California farm that supplies chicken and turkey to Amazon and others.

“Animal abuse is the crime here, not animal rescue,” Ms Sawhney said in a press release published quickly after the incident.

“It’s time Amazon and Jeff Bezos take a stand for transparency, rather than actively suppressing the truth.