Skip to main content

Global Beauty Pageant Will No Longer Be Held In Myanmar Over War In Nation

Myanmar has been scrapped as the host of this year's Miss Grand International beauty pageant due to the civil war roiling the country, its organisers told AFP on Thursday.

Dozens of contestants were slated to arrive in the commercial hub Yangon in October to compete in the pageant, hosted by Thailand-based Miss Grand International.

"We confirm that MGI 2024 will no longer be held in Myanmar, due to the current situation," Ratchaphol Chantaratim, a representative for the company, told AFP.

An alternate venue "will be announced later", he said in an email.

Myanmar opened up to tourists in 2011 following decades of military rule, becoming popular with travellers seeking a new destination away from the well-trodden backpacker haunts of Southeast Asia.

However, foreign arrivals have plummeted since the military seized power again in 2021 and sparked a widespread armed uprising.

Around 2.7 million people have been displaced by the conflict, according to the United Nations, and the military has been accused of mass atrocities as it struggles to crush opposition to its rule.

Most of the fighting is taking place outside Yangon, but opponents of the junta regularly bomb buildings linked to the security forces and carry out assassinations of its supporters in the city.

A night-time curfew remains in place in the city of some eight million and security forces carry out regular raids and arrests of suspected dissidents.

Power blackouts frequently plunge whole neighbourhoods into darkness and access to ATMs and foreign exchange counters is patchy.

Many Western embassies advise against travel to Myanmar.

Australian football club Macarthur faced criticism in 2023 after travelling to play in Myanmar against official government advice.

Honduran model Cecilia Garcia -- who had been selected to represent her country at the "Miss Grand International" -- said this month she would not be travelling to Myanmar due to security risks.

At the 2021 edition of the event in Thailand, Myanmar contestant Thaw Nandar Aung publicly criticised the junta and its bloody crackdown on protests against its coup.

The former psychology student, better known by her professional name Han Lay, was refused permission to enter Thailand and spent days stranded at an airport in Bangkok.

She was later granted asylum in Canada.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)



from NDTV News-World-news https://ift.tt/BsjDpGZ

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

It's Official, Kamala Harris Is Democratic Candidate For US Election

US Vice President Kamala Harris effectively secured the Democratic party's presidential nomination Friday, confirming her remarkable rise to party standard bearer in November's showdown against Republican Donald Trump. Kamala Harris was the sole candidate on the ballot for a five-day electronic vote of nearly 4,000 party convention delegates. She will be officially crowned at a Chicago convention later this month. "I am honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States," Kamala Harris, 59, said on a phone-in to a party celebration after securing enough votes by the second day of the marathon vote. In the two weeks since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, Kamala Harris has gained full control of the party. No other Democrats stepped forward to challenge her elevation to the top of the ticket, making her confirmation as the first Black and South Asian woman ever to secure a major party's nomination a formality. The a...

Muhammad Now The Most Popular Name For A Baby In Great Britain, Data Shows

427 years after William Shakespeare wrote it for the first time in the great "tragedy" Romeo & Juliet, England is asking the quintessential question - "What's in a name?" - And this time wondering what significance that question might hold in another 42.7 years. The Department of Statistics in the United Kingdom has revealed in its latest dataset that Muhammad is officially the most popular name for a newborn boy in England and Wales. More than 4,600 babies were registered with that name in 2023 - the highest for a boy. Muhammad was the second-most popular name in 2022 as well. Noah, once the most popular name in UK, came a distant second this year, according to the Office for National Statistics or ONS. But the staff at Great Britain's statistical office has in-fact been observing the trend for a while now. Jotting down the most popular names in the UK, besides other important statistics, it revealed that Muhammad has been among the top 10 names for...

Pak's ISI Fuelling Unrest In Bangladesh, Claims Sheikh Hasina's Son

Sheikh Hasina, who quit as prime minister and fled Bangladesh, will be back in the country as soon as democracy is restored, his son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said on Thursday and blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency, ISI, for fuelling the ongoing unrest in the country. In an interview with PTI, Mr Joy said that although 76-year-old Sheikh Hasina would return to Bangladesh, it has not yet been decided whether she will be back as a "retired or active" politician. He also asserted that the members of the Sheikh Mujib (Sheikh Mujibur Rahman) family will neither abandon its people nor leave the beleaguered Awami League in the lurch. He expressed gratitude to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government for protecting his mother and appealed to India to help build international opinion and exert pressure to restore democracy in Bangladesh. "Yes, it is true that I had said she wouldn't return to Bangladesh. But a lot has changed in the last two days following continuous...