Some medical experts unconvinced about holding Tokyo Games

80% OF TOKYO'S RESIDENTS OPPOSE HOLDING THE GAMES

TOKYO — The Tokyo Olympics open in under four months, and the torch relay has begun to crisscross Japan with 10,000 runners. Organizers say they are mitigating the risks, but some medical experts aren't convinced

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“It is best to not hold the Olympics given the considerable risks,” Dr. Norio Sugaya, an infectious diseases expert at Keiyu Hospital in Yokohama, told The Associated Press. “The risks are high in Japan. Japan is dangerous, not a safe place at all.”

Sugaya believes vaccinating 50-70% of the general public should be “a prerequisite” to safely hold the Olympics, a highly unlikely scenario given the slow vaccine rollout in Japan.

Fewer than 1% of the population has been vaccinated so far, and all are medical professionals. Most of the general public is not expected to be vaccinated by the time the Olympics open July 23.

“Tens of thousands of foreigners are going to be entering the country, including mass media, in a short period of time," Sugaya said, “the challenges are going to be enormous.”

The Japanese government and local Olympic organizers have said vaccination is not a prerequisite for the Olympics, although the International Olympic Committee is encouraging the 15,400 Olympic and Paralympic athletes to be vaccinated when they enter Japan.

The number of COVID-19-related deaths in Japan is about 9,000 — far fewer than many countries — but Sugaya stressed the number is among the highest in Asia.

Hospital systems are stretched, especially in hardest hit areas such as Tokyo.

Japan never pushed PCR testing, meaning few mechanisms are in place to prevent infection clusters. There hasn't been a national lockdown, but the government has periodically issued a “state of emergency,” urging people to work from home and restaurants to close early.

Dr. Toshio Nakagawa, who heads the Japan Medical Association, expressed serious concern about what he called “a rebound” of coronavirus cases. He called for preventive measures.

“To prevent a fourth wave, we have to act forcefully and extremely quickly,” he told reporters earlier this month.

Taisuke Nakata and Daisuke Fujii, professors of economics at the University of Tokyo, have been carrying out projections for the spread of the coronavirus, adapting a standard epidemiological model but taking into account economic activity as measured by GDP and mobility data.

According to their projections, daily infection cases in Tokyo will total more than 1,000 people by May, peaking in July, right about the time the Olympics are on. Daily cases have hovered at about 300 people for Tokyo lately.

They say that’s an “optimistic” scenario that assumes vaccines will be gradually rolling out by then.

The other possible scenario has the government declaring a state of emergency as daily cases climb. That could mean the Olympics will be held in the middle of an “emergency.”

The professors declined to comment directly on the wisdom of holding the Olympics.

Despite the warnings, the Japanese government and Tokyo Olympics organizers remain determined to go ahead with the Games. Tokyo is officially spending $15.4 billion to prepare the Olympics, but several government audits say it might be twice that much. All but $6.7 billion is public money.

The chief driver of the Olympics is the IOC, which derives almost 75% of its income from broadcast rights and needs to get the games on television.

Organizers say they will hold a “safe and secure” Olympics by keeping athletes and officials in a “bubble,” administering periodic tests, and then getting everyone to leave Japan as soon as possible.

Last week the IOC said it would cut back on the number of accredited participants entering Japan, providing credentials only to those who “have essential and operational responsibilities.”

Japanese news agency Kyodo has reported, citing unidentified sources, that 90,000 people are expected to enter Japan from abroad. About 30,000 of those are Olympic and Paralympic athletes, coaches, staff and officials.

That leaves 60,000, and Kyodo said the plan is to cut that to about 30,000, many of whom would be news media.

In addition, organizers said all ticket holders from abroad would be banned from entering.

Public opinion surveys show most Japanese want the Tokyo Games cancelled or postponed again.

Taro Yamamoto, a former lawmaker, said Japan is not prepared to deal with an influx of travellers from abroad.

“If Japan has not been able to protect its own people, it cannot claim to be able to protect people from all over the world,” during the Olympics, he said. “To keep insisting the Games will go on is just madness.”

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/olympic-games and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

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Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Stephen Wade is on Twitter https://twitter.com/StephenWadeAP

Yuri Kageyama And Stephen Wade, The Associated Press

Naomi Osaka Condemns Anti-Asian Hate, ‘Sad That This Even Has To Be A Hashtag’

Naomi Osaka is adding her voice to the stop anti-Asian hate conversation.

© AP Photo/Andy Brownbill/CPImages Naomi Osaka

The tennis star, who is Japanese and Haitian, shared a message on Twitter.


"The amount of hate, racism, and blame for COVID towards the Asian community is disgusting. The fact that this topic is not very widely covered makes me concerned. I only found videos and information because I was scrolling through my IG feed and by some algorithm it appeared," she wrote.

She also posted on Instagram, adding, "#stopasianhate <- It’s really sad that this even has to be a hashtag/slogan. It should be common sense but it seems like common sense is uncommon in this world now."

The Women's Tennis Association posted a video in which Osaka and other tennis stars condemned hate against minorities.

There has been a rise against the Asian community including a shooting in Atlanta that left eight people dead.

A number of celebs including John Oliver, Ken Jeong and Daniel Dae Kim have spoken out.

ET Canada stands with the Asian community in working together to stop anti-Asian racism in Canada, the United States, and around the world to #StopAsianHate.

Canadians can stay informed by following community groups and leaders, including but not limited to: https://nextshark.com/, https://www.dearasianyouth.org/home,

https://www.thepeahceproject.com/ and https://www.asianmhc.org/instagram-partners.

If you or someone you know is experiencing hate-crimes related to xenophobic attacks in Canada you can file a report at: https://www.elimin8hate.org/fileareport.

Bystander intervention training to anti-Asian and xenophobic harassment is available at: ihollaback.org/bystanderintervention/.

Power in numbers: Making visible the violence against racialized women

Miwa A. Takeuchi, Associate Professor, 

Learning Sciences, University of Calgary 


Violence and pain change the way we experience our surroundings and the way our bodies move: our eyes become wide in search of potential dangers, our bodies become tense.

What is the power — both negative and positive — of understanding such violence and pain with numbers? There are dangers in reducing our pain to numbers, but at the same time, we can use mathematical literacy for social causes by revealing hidden violence, such as the violence against migrant racialized women.

Mathematical literacy doesn’t just mean mastering mathematics defined by school curriculum; it also means gaining a sense of how to apply mathematical concepts to everyday life, for social causes and gaining insight into how numbers and data have inherently political resonances. It can also provide us with the opportunity to listen to historically marginalized voices to analyze interlocking systems of violence and oppression.
Intersectionality and violence against women

The recent mass shooting in Atlanta that violently took the lives of eight people, six of which were Asian American women, sparked demonstrations against anti-Asian racism that have long been silenced through the model minority myth — which minimizes and undermines the experiences of racism among Asians.

Read more: The model minority myth hides the racist and sexist violence experienced by Asian women

The intersection of racism and sexism and other interlocking systems of oppression, like migration, geo-economic politics and the criminalization of sex work are considered to be at play in the violence that happened in Atlanta.

Read more: The Atlanta attacks were not just racist and misogynist, they painfully reflect the society we live in

A lens of intersectionality shines light on the violence against Black women, Indigenous women and racialized women at large. And it also reveals the violence against Asian women who have been stereotypically hypersexualized and deemed submissive, disposable and consumable.
The power of mobilizing mathematical literacy

Understanding intersectional violence through numbers can help make visible the invisible.

In an era of protests, the political neutrality of mathematics is being questioned.

The power of mobilizing mathematical literacy for local policy changes became evident in my work with Virgie Aquino Ishihara, a longtime volunteer and community activist, at the Filipino Migrants Center, in Japan.

The Filipino Migrants Center worked tirelessly with migrant communities to redress violence rooted in human trafficking in the urban entertainment industry. It countered official data on domestic and work-place violence that did not reveal historically marginalized voices and violence against their bodies, through the numeration of hidden violence. Mobilization of mathematical literacy became a powerful tool in the context of social movements to redress human trafficking associated with entertainer visas.

By analyzing the economic impact of remittance from migrants in relation to governmental policies, the Filipino Migrants Centre was able to contextualize what pushed women to migrate as entertainer visa holders. These big-picture understandings led the activists to see historical and macro-economic dilemmas around domestic and workplace violence against migrant women — something that has been historically construed as personal problems.
Dangers in putting numbers to our pain

When violence against racialized women’s bodies is reduced to a number (“one” incident), and discussed simply as one more violent act against an anonymous racialized woman, elements and stories that women embody begin to be erased.

In this light, movements such as #SayHerName are important in centring stories of Black women who have been victimized by racially charged police violence from becoming a number (as seen in the recent killing of Breonna Taylor). Journalist, Shiori Ito, who led Japan’s social movement to fight against sexual violence chose to de-anonymize herself in order to challenge media that reports and speaks for these “numbers” whose stories and bodies end up erased through anonymity.  

© (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Freelance journalist Shiori Ito 

talks to her supporters outside a courthouse, Dec. 18, 2019, in Tokyo.

Such politics of de-anonymization, however, should also respect the choice of silence. To stay silent and to endure the hardships toward dignity — a notion captured by the Japanese term shinbo — was a choice made by some Japanese Canadians and Japanese Americans who experienced internment during the Second World War.

Numeration can also risk reducing our intersectional histories and experiences to deterministic categories. Binary and categorical frameworks (e.g. women versus men) inscribed in statistics can perpetuate genderism and queerphobia that privileges those who can conform to gender norms, cisnormativity and heteronormativity.

The complexities of human stories and the voices that deviate from the norm shouldn’t be lost in the process of numeration and mathematization.
Healing our collective pain

In our study, the Filipino Migrants Centre’s efforts to make visible the invisible by exercising mathematical literacy brought consequential changes in the urban entertainment district.

As we walked around the district, we noticed significant changes that took place in the public park — migrant women and allies came together. And as people came together, resident-led safety efforts developed as an alternative to institutional policing and surveillance. Creating a safer outdoor place required changing the actions of bystanders who can intervene in violence.

Mathematical literacy can allow us to listen to historically marginalized voices that are less heard yet powerful and strong to analyze interlocking systems of violence and oppression. However, numeration and mathematization have to be done through a non-hierarchical distribution of power with people who are directly impacted by historical oppression with respect to pain that cannot be reduced to numbers.

Intentional design of spaces toward solidarity, backed up with ethical mobilization of mathematical literacy, could move us toward healing our collective pain of violence.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Miwa A. Takeuchi receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Paris court convicts, fines pharma firm for deadly diet pill

PARIS — A French pharmaceutical company on Monday was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of euros in damages and fines for its role in one of the nation’s biggest modern health scandals, with a Paris court finding the firm guilty of manslaughter and other charges for selling a diabetes drug blamed for hundreds of deaths.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The ruling capped a judicial marathon targeting Servier Laboratories and involving more than 6,500 plaintiffs. The Paris tribunal took nearly three hours to read out its verdict totalling 1,988 pages.

The huge trial was spread over 10 months in 2019 and 2020, and nearly 400 lawyers worked on the case. Exceptionally, the Paris tribunal was also connected by video link Monday to a courthouse in Montpellier, southern France, so dozens of plaintiffs there could also see the delivery of the verdict.

The case centred on the diabetes drug Mediator. Servier was accused of putting profits ahead of patients’ welfare by allowing the drug to be widely and irresponsibly prescribed as a diet pill — with deadly consequences. Servier argued that it didn’t know about the drug’s dangers.

The court found Servier guilty of manslaughter, involuntary wounding and aggravated deception. The judges’ ruling said the firm hid the drug’s hunger-suppressant side effects from medical regulators. The court acquitted Servier of fraud.

Also found guilty and fined for manslaughter and unintentional injury was the French medicines agency, now reformed and renamed. It was accused of failing to take adequate measures to protect patients and of being too close to Servier. Lawyers for the agency said it acknowledged some responsibility but also was misled by Servier.

Judges handed Servier a fine of 2.7 million euros (nearly $3.2 million) and ordered it to pay hundreds of millions more in damages to be shared out among plaintiffs. Damages for aggravated deception alone totalled nearly 159 million euros. And other hefty payments were awarded for the manslaughter and wounding charges.

The court also handed a suspended four-year prison sentence and fines to the only surviving Servier executive accused of involvement, Dr. Jean-Philippe Seta.

A 2010 study said Mediator was suspected in up to 2,000 deaths, with doctors linking it to heart and lung problems, in the 33 years that it was on the market. Some survivors suffered severe health complications, requiring heart transplants and other medical procedures, after taking the drug as a hunger suppressant.

Irene Frachon, a whistleblowing doctor who was among the first to raise the alarm about the drug's effects, welcomed the guilty verdicts.

“The court clearly said there was deception and that Mediator was a hunger suppressant, an amphetamine, whose properties and, above all, toxicity were very deliberately hidden from consumers,” Frachon told French broadcaster BFM-TV. “This, very clearly, is white-collar crime.”

The pulmonologist in the western city of Brest investigated Mediator’s effects after treating a patient in 2007 who later died. Frachon was a witness in the trial.

One doctor flagged concerns as far back as 1998, and testified that he was bullied into retracting them. Facing questions about the drug’s side effects from medical authorities in Switzerland, Spain and Italy, Servier withdrew it from those markets between 1997 and 2004. The company suspended sales in its main market in France in 2009. Mediator wasn’t sold in the U.S.

Lawyers for Servier argued that the company wasn’t aware of the risks associated with Mediator before 2009, and said the company never claimed it was a diet pill. They had argued for acquittal.

The company’s CEO and founder, Jacques Servier, was indicted early in the legal process but died in 2014.

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Nicolas Vaux-Montagny reported from Lyon. John Leicester contributed from Le Pecq.

Nicolas Vaux-Montagny And Francois Mori, The Associated Press

HOLI A FIRE FESTIVAL OF SPRING

Indians gather for Holi celebrations as virus cases surge

NEW DELHI — Hindus threw colored powder and sprayed water in massive Holi celebrations Monday despite many Indian states restricting gatherings to try to contain a coronavirus resurgence rippling across the country.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Holi marks the advent of spring and is widely celebrated throughout Hindu-majority India. Most years, millions of people throw colored powder at each other in outdoor celebrations. But for the second consecutive year, people were encouraged to stay at home to avoid turning the festivities into superspreader events amid the latest virus surge.

India’s confirmed infections have exceeded 60,000 daily over the past week from a low of about 10,000 in February. On Monday, the health ministry reported 68,020 new cases, the sharpest daily rise since October last year. It took the nationwide tally to more than 12 million.

Daily deaths rose by 291 and the virus has so far killed 161,843 people in the country.

The latest surge is centred in the western state of Maharashtra where authorities have tightened travel restrictions and imposed night curfews. It is considering a strict lockdown.

Cases are also rising in the capital New Delhi and states of Punjab, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.

The surge coincides with multi-stage state elections marked by large gatherings and roadshows, and the Kumbh Mela, or pitcher festival, celebrated in northern Haridwar city, where tens of thousands of Hindu devotees daily take a holy dip into the Ganges river.

Health experts worry that unchecked gatherings can lead to clusters, adding the situation can be controlled if vaccination is opened up for more people and COVID-19 protocols are strictly followed.

India, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, has vaccinated around 60 million people, of which only 9 million have received both doses of vaccine so far.

However, more than 60 million doses manufactured in India have been exported abroad, prompting widespread criticism that domestic needs should be catered to first.

The government said last week that there would be no immediate increase in exports. It said vaccines will be given to everyone over 45 starting April 1.

Sheikh Saaliq, The Associated Press


TOPICS FOR YOU

LUCY, ANOTHER LONELY ELEPHANT
Cher Fighting To Free Elephant From Edmonton Zoo

In addition to being an Oscar-winning actress, music icon and international superstar, Cher is also co-founder of Free the Wild, an organization devoted to freeing animals held in captivity in zoos and repatriating them in their natural habitats.

© Ethan Miller/Getty Images

In that role, notes the organization's website, the "Moonstruck" star wrote a letter to Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson and Gary Dewar, director of the Edmonton Valley Zoo, calling for the release of an elephant named Lucy after 45 years of captivity.

In Cher's letter, the organization offers to send an independent elephant expert vet to examine Lucy in order to "determine the genuine status of her health."

RELATED: Cher And Lily Tomlin Urge Los Angeles Zoo To Release Billy The Elephant: ‘He Is In Pain’

Cher's letter follows a previous letter, sent in February, to Free the Wild co-founder Gina Nelthorpe Cowne, from Dr. Rick Quinn, a veterinarian and director of the Jane Goodall Institute.

In Quinn's letter, Lucy is described as "an Asian elephant who has lived in the sub-artic conditions of Canada for over 40 years. She has never been with another Asian elephant and her only companion was taken away in 2006. Edmonton Valley Zoo’s limited operating times means even the company of humans is few and far between.”

Lucy is also suffering significant health issues due to captivity. "She is 1,000 lbs overweight and suffers from significant arthritis and foot disease. She has difficulty bearing weight on her back legs and, due to an inappropriate diet, suffers dental issues and painful colic issues which have caused her to collapse – seen lying down, slapping her stomach with her trunk. With no place to swim, no mud in which to wallow or trees to scratch against, Free The Wild aims to work with Edmonton Valley Zoo to find an amicable solution in securing her release. Despite being 45 years old, Lucy has another 15-20 years left of her life,” the letter continues.

RELATED: Cher Greets The ‘World’s Loneliest Elephant’ Upon Its Arrival In Cambodia

Cher has used her celebrity in recent years to to assist in freeing elephants from zoos.

In November 2020, Cher travelled to Cambodia to watch as Kavaan — dubbed by the media as "the world's loneliest elephant — was released into an elephant sanctuary after being freed from a Pakistani zoo after more than three decades of captivity.

CULTURE WARS

How women in India reclaimed the protest power of ripped jeans

Deepali Dewan, Dan Mishra Curator of South Asian Art & Culture, Royal Ontario Museum / Associate Professor, Department of Art History, University of Toronto 2021-03-25

A recently-elected Indian chief minister associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government sparked a swift and impassioned social media storm after he made a negative comment about a woman wearing ripped jeans on March 17.

© (Twitter/@prag65043538, @sherryshroff, @ruchikokcha) After an Indian politician recently tried to shame a woman for wearing ripped jeans, women's responses were swift and sharp.

While speaking at a workshop organized by the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Uttarakhand Chief Minister Tirath Singh Rawat said he was shocked and outraged after he encountered a woman on his flight wearing ripped jeans. The minister took issue with her exposed knees. Rawat also pointed out that the woman was with her children and a leader of an NGO. He said these two facts combined with the ripped jeans put her moral values even further into question. The clip was circulated widely in the Indian press.

Maybe it was the creepy way Chief Minister Rawat described himself scanning the woman’s body with his gaze or the shaming tone he used when he asked her where her husband was. Or perhaps it was the judgemental way he expressed his opinion that ripped jeans were incommensurate with running an NGO and being a mother, and not in line with his version of Indian values. Or it could even have been the casual way he felt he had the right to interrogate her clothing choice at all.

But women across India responded in protest with alacrity and speed as they posted photos of themselves in ripped jeans on social media. Some even cut holes into their jeans before posting the defiant images. At one point, #RippedJeans was top trending on Twitter in India.

As an art historian of South Asian visual culture, I am interested in the ways images convey meaning. Why did ripped jeans cause such a stir? What are the codes contained in this seemingly simple but ubiquitous fashion trend?

Historians and writers such as Ramchandra Guha have acknowledged how serious affronts to civil rights occurring in India today have been steadily eroding India’s democracy. Within these deep and structural challenges, the recent ripped-jeans demonstrations offer a glimmer of hope. The online storm is a sign that India’s democracy is resilient and that protest can emerge in unexpected ways.

Read more: In India, Modi’s nationalism quashes dissent with help from the media
The meaning of clothing

India has a history of using clothing to convey political meaning and even as a strategy to incite change. As anthropologist Emma Tarlo explains in Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India, what one chooses to wear has long been understood as a maker of meaning, a way of both expressing and shaping personal identity.

For example, in 1903 (as I’ve written about elsewhere) the wealthiest man in India at the time, the Nizam of Hyderabad, chose to wear a simple western suit to the 1903 Delhi Durbar, a ceremony marking the coronation of the British monarch. In so doing, he instigated the displeasure of a British colonial administration who liked to see their native rulers dressed as spectacles of South Asian finery.

Later, Mohandas K. Gandhi wore a dhoti to have tea at Buckingham Palace in 1931. The dhoti, made out of hand-spun cotton, was part of the larger khadi movement to protest the import of cheaper-than-local machine-made British products that led to the decline of the Indian textile industry.

© (James Mills Collection/AP) Mohandas K. Gandhi in England, 1931.

Jeans go global

In Global Denim, scholars explore the different contexts of jean wearing around the world. Jeans in India have a specific history and context — and the meaning of a pair of jeans has evolved since the 1970s when they were first popularly introduced.

Jeans have humble beginnings. They were developed as a durable attire for mine workers in the United States in the 1930s, but grew in popularity through association with cowboy films. In 1955, Marlon Brando secured the jean’s association with youth culture, rebellion and counterculture when he wore them in Rebel Without A Cause to arousing effect. By the 1970s, this popularity had expanded. Punk and grunge bands put gaping holes in jeans to convey anger toward convention and society’s obsession with material things.

© (Sippy Films) A movie still from ‘Sholay,’ 1975.

As a kid, whose family had migrated from India to the U.S. in the mid 1970s, I recall being a wide-eyed ‘80s teenager in a New York City store. The shop carried two floors of nothing but ripped jeans. I was shocked that the store had been able to source so many second-hand jeans. Only later, did I understand that clothing manufacturers had started producing new jeans with holes in them as part of their product line. In this way, they had turned dissent into a marketable fashion statement.

In India, the jean was popularized in the post-independence period with exposure to western films. The clamour for jeans received a huge boost when irresistible bad boy film star Amitabh Bachchan wore jeans in the 1975 mega-blockbuster, Sholay. The jeans were a reflection of the youthful and rebellious nature of his character.

But jeans were still inaccessible to the majority of India’s youth. India’s self-sufficient economic policies made access to foreign brands difficult or very expensive. Indians eventually turned to tailors to stitch their jeans. Finally, by the '90s there were domestic brands of jeans to be had, although foreign brands still had cachet, especially in urban areas.

After India’s economic liberalization in the 1990s, foreign brands became more available, albeit still expensive. Ripped jeans came soon after with the increased exposure to international trends.

So in India, jeans were associated with the West, modernity and youth culture. That is to an extent still true. But jeans with holes have the added association with protest and dissent.

Protest power

Chief Minister Rawat has since apologized. But the backlash to his comments seems to be as much about his and his party’s policing of women’s bodies as about their policing of free speech, which ripped jeans have come to symbolize in general.

Today, shopping for my 14-year-old daughter in Toronto, it is hard to find anything but ripped jeans. In fact, ripped jeans are so mainstream that in some sense their association with rebellion and dissent has been muted by the process of commodification.

This is a market that even BJP allies have invested in. One company, owned by a yoga guru that sells ripped jeans tweeted: “Our jeans are ripped, but we haven’t ripped them so much also so as to lose our Indian-ness and our values.”

Ironically, Chief Minister Rawat’s comments, which sound out of touch not only for their arcane notions of modesty but also the agency they ascribe to ripped jeans, have infused new vigour into an old symbol. At least for a moment in India, it seems, ripped jeans have reclaimed their protest power.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Deepali Dewan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

THE REAL CULTURE WARS

Are suit jackets oppression? Lawmakers fight own dress codes THAT AREN'T THEIRS

ALL DRESS  CODES ARE OPPRESSIVE

BOSTON — A sneaker-clad Latino state senator in Rhode Island is objecting to his chamber’s jacket and dress shirt edict as a form of white oppression. Female lawmakers in Montana complain proposed rules dealing with s kirt lengths and necklines are overly sexist.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

And an Iowa state representative wore jeans on the floor last month to highlight the irony of Republican leaders refusing to mandate face masks in the chamber as the coronavirus pandemic rages while still banning jeans and other casual clothes.

With women and people of colour elected in larger numbers in many states, legislatures are being forced to confront longstanding dress codes that are increasingly viewed as sexist and racist.

“These rules make it OK for us to judge people based on the way they dress or how they look, and I just feel that’s super problematic,” said Jonathon Acosta, the 31-year-old Democratic state senator from Rhode Island. “I assure you that what I wear does not influence the quality of the work I produce.”

The National Conference of State Legislatures hasn’t tallied how many legislatures are considering or have adopted rules addressing attire this year. But the Denver-based organization said roughly half of all state legislatures had some sort of formalized dress code in 2019.

Debates over dress have also come up in Congress. Objections from female lawmakers to a longstanding ban on sleeveless tops and open-toed shoes in the House prompted former Republican Speaker Paul Ryan in 2017 to promise a review, though it's unclear whether the rule was updated to reflect contemporary standards. Spokespersons for Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't respond to phone and email messages seeking comment Wednesday.

On the other side of the globe, a Maori lawmaker won his battle against wearing a tie in the New Zealand Parliament last month. He derided the tie as a “colonial noose" and wore a traditional hei tiki pendant instead.

Wearing unconventional clothing can be an effective “statement of resistance” or solidarity in the political arena, but dress codes also play an important role in preserving decorum, said Rhonda Garelick, a dean at the Parsons School of Design in New York.

“That is where the pushback comes from: We dress differently for a funeral from the way we do at a barbecue,” she said. “Are there other ways to convey difference or resistance while still conveying respect or formality?”

The strife over dress codes also reflect a general movement towards more casual, informal dress in modern society, said Richard Thompson Ford, a Stanford Law School professor and author of “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History.”

“When I look at the senator from Rhode Island, he looks more like a ‘tech bro’ to me than anything else,” Ford said, referencing the sometimes derisive nickname for certain workers in Silicon Valley.

The Democrat-controlled Rhode Island Senate approved its new dress code Tuesday, over objections from Acosta and other lawmakers.

The provision, a revision of a policy the chamber has had for decades, requires Senate members and staff dress in “proper and appropriate attire, such as blouses, dress slacks and collared shirts with accompanying jacket.”

Democratic Sen. Louis DiPalma, who chairs the rules committee that vetted the revised mandates, argued that the dress provision is broader than those in other state legislatures.

“It’s not about judging how anyone looks,” he said. “A dress code and decorum are about respecting an institution that is 200-plus years old.”

Sen. Gordon Rogers, a Republican from rural Foster, said he supported the attire rules even as he admitted it was difficult to trade in his beloved Chippewa boots for dress shoes and secondhand suits to enter the chamber.

“It’s not about disenfranchising anybody,” the businessman and farmer said to some applause. “Sometimes you have to force respect.”

But Sen. Cynthia Mendes, an East Providence Democrat, countered that this year’s dress code is more specific than the chamber’s previous one, which simply required all persons on the Senate floor “be properly dressed.”

She also questioned the timing of the new edict, following an election in which more women and people of colour were voted into the 38-member chamber in its history.

“This is colonization language. The need to remind everyone who is in power. It has always started with what you tell them to do with their bodies,” Mendes said. “That’s not lost on me.”

Acosta, who was elected in November to represent the strongly Latino city of Central Falls, argued that the Senate’s dress code isn’t even widely enforced. He’s been wearing cardigans, joggers and Air Jordan sneakers for weeks without any apparent objection.

“Whose sensibilities are being insulted?” Acosta asked, purposefully donning a black guayabera, a traditional Caribbean dress shirt, that didn’t have a collar for Tuesday's debate.

After the vote, the Brown University sociology graduate student acknowledged that Senate leaders at least removed language imposing the dress code on chamber guests, a concern he and others raised earlier.

But he said the strong opposition to ending the dress code outright only underscores the uphill battle younger, progressive lawmakers face in trying to advance more pressing priorities.

“It speaks to how conservative the institution is,” Acosta said. “It’s very difficult to change anything."

Philip Marcelo, The Associated Press

UN commission urges equality for women in decision-making
CAMEROON, Cameroon — The U.N.’s premiere global body fighting for gender equality called for a sharp increase of women in global decision-making in a hotly debated final document adopted last Friday night that saw continuing pushback against women’s rights and a refusal to address issues of gender identity.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

The Commission on the Status of Women reaffirmed the blueprint to achieve gender equality adopted 25 years ago at the Beijing women’s conference and shone a spotlight on several major issues today, including the imbalance of power between men and women in public life and the growing impact of violence against women and girls in the digital world.

Diplomats were negotiating until almost the last minute over language on women human rights defenders, gender-based violence, and earlier on reproductive and sexual health and rights. Some Western nations sought unsuccessfully to get the commission to recognize gender non-conforming and transgender women. The closest they got was a reference to women and girls “who experience multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination" and face “diverse situations and conditions."

The European Union said it would have liked to see “more ambitious language” in the 23-page document, stressing that “the systematic attempts by some delegations to derail the process and question international commitments and obligations on gender equality show that the pushback against women’s rights continue.”

Shannon Kowalski, director of advocacy and policy for The International Women’s Health Coalition, said at a briefing earlier Friday that this year “Russia has been very vocal and on the front lines” in pushing “for language that is often regressing and that seeks to deny women and girls ... their rights.” The Holy See often joined their positions, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Cuba were also vocal opponents on many issues, she said, while China opposed any reference to women human rights defenders.

“Russia played an exceptionally disruptive role in the negotiations,” an EU diplomat said. “Today’s low common denominator result demonstrates that a pushback against women’s rights continues at the U.N., and that Russia is doing all it can to undermine progress on the issue.” The diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of private discussions.

The “Agreed Conclusions” were negotiated by the 193 U.N. member nations and adopted by consensus by the commission’s 45 members at the end of a two-week meeting. The U.N. women’s agency said more than 25,000 members of civil society registered to participate in the partly in-person but mainly virtual meeting that saw 200 side events led by member states and more than 700 events by civil society representatives.

After Ambassador Mher Margaryan, the commission chair, banged the gavel signifying consensus, about two dozen countries spoke.

Saudi Arabia stressed that any reference to gender “means women and men” and to marriage as “between women and men.” China said it would not join consensus on the role of women human rights defenders.

In the document, the commission supports the important role of civil society in promoting and protecting the human rights and freedoms of all women, “including women human rights defenders.”

U.N. Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said areas in the outcome document “do not please everybody,” and the conclusions could have been “more ambitious” and the recommendations “even bolder and decisive.”

She urged member states to use the recommendations “as a building block and to outperform what is contained in these Agreed Conclusions.” She said next week’s mainly virtual Gender Equality Forum in Mexico City, another follow-up to the 1995 Beijing conference, “will take forward what we have learned from the discussions of this commission and look at how we take concrete actions.”

Mlambo-Ngcuka said the conclusions “contribute to important advances” on women’s participation in public life, the main focus of the meeting along with tackling violence against women which increased during last year’s COVID-19 pandemic.

The commission recognized that despite some progress women have a long road to reach equality with men in elections or appointments to decision-making bodies and administrative posts, she said. And it recognized that temporary special measures, including quotas, substantially contribute to increasing women’s representation in national and local legislatures, and called on all governments to set specific targets and timelines to achieve the goal of 50/50 gender balance in elected positions.

On violence against women in the digital world, Mlambo-Ngcuka said the commission noted the lack of preventive measures and remedies. She said member states should take action to encourage women's digital participation and protect them, including from cyberstalking and cyberbullying.

The Beijing declaration and platform approved by 189 countries in 1995 called for bold action in 12 areas to achieve gender equality, including combating poverty and gender-based violence, ensuring all girls get an education and putting women at top levels of business and government, as well as at peacemaking tables.

It also said, for the first time in a U.N. document, that women’s human rights include the right to control and decide “on matters relating to their sexuality, including their sexual and reproductive health, free of discrimination, coercion and violence.”

In Friday's outcome document, the commission urges governments at all levels to “ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.”

It also urges governments to provide information on sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention, gender equality and women’s empowerment” to adolescent girls and boys and young women and men, “with appropriate direction and guidance from parents and legal guardians."

On a positive note, the International Women’s Health Coalition’s Kowalski said the commission’s meeting saw “very strong leadership” from a number of Latin American and Pacific island countries and the “really strong and vital return of the United States as a leader and defender of sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender equality and women’s rights more broadly.”

A highlight of the meeting was the virtual appearance by U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris, who told the commission "the status of women is the status of democracy” and President Joe Biden’s administration will work to improve both.

Edith M. Lederer, The Associated Press

Chinese celebs, netizens slam 'two-faced' Hugo Boss over Xinjiang

BEIJING (Reuters) - At least three Chinese celebrities on Saturday dropped German fashion house Hugo Boss, the latest foreign brand caught in a concerted boycott by Chinese consumers over Western accusations of forced labour in Xinjiang

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© Reuters/THOMAS PETER 

People walk past a store of German fashion house Hugo Boss in Beijing

Among the celebrities who ended their pacts with Hugo Boss was actor-singer Li Yifeng, who said in a statement through his agent on the Twitter-like microblog Weibo that he would only cooperate with brands that specifically support and procure cotton from the farwestern Chinese region.

Activists and U.N. rights experts have accused China of using mass detainment, torture, forced labour and sterilisations on Uighurs in Xinjiang. China denies these claims and says its actions in the region are necessary to counter extremism.

Hugo Boss, in a post on its Weibo account on Thursday, said it would "continue to purchase and support Xinjiang cotton." But it said on Friday that it was not an authorised post, and had been deleted accordingly.

In an email to Reuters on Friday, company spokeswoman Carolin Westermann said an undated English-language statement on its website stating that "so far, HUGO BOSS has not procured any goods originating in the Xinjiang region from direct suppliers" was its official position.

On Saturday, the brand's Weibo account issued a new statement saying it cherished all longstanding relationships with partners in China.

Hugo Boss China did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Chinese internet users have accused Hugo Boss for backtracking on its position, saying the brand was being "two faced", with some vowing to boycott the brand for good.

"A two-faced person is the most disgusting. I'll boycott you forever," said a Weibo user.

The United States on Friday condemned what it called a "state-led" social media campaign in China against U.S. and other international companies for deciding not to use cotton from China's Xinjiang region over forced labour concerns.

The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

New Balance, Under Armour, Tommy Hilfiger and Converse, owned by Nike, are among companies that have come under fire in China for statements that they would not use cotton produced in the far-western Chinese region due to suspected forced labour.

The United States and other Western countries have imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which the United States has said have amounted to genocide.

"Several companies are starting to cave in to China's threats by removing their forced labour policies from their websites, and even going as far as promoting "Xinjiang

Cotton" on their websites, which reports show is tainted with Uighur forced labour," the World Uyghur Congress said in a statement.

"This is the ultimate moral test for these companies: opt for respecting human rights or embolden the genocidal regime of the Chinese Commmunist Party," said the largest group representing exiled ethnic Uighurs.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Michael Perry)