প্রকাশ: 13/12/2021
Harnaaz Sandhu of India has been crowned the 70th Miss
Universe, topping a field of some 80 contestants in a pageant that was touched
by politics and the pandemic.
The previously reigning Miss Universe, Andrea Meza of
Mexico, crowned her successor, a 21-year-old model, early on Monday in the
Israeli Red Sea resort town of Eilat.
The pageant was held in the middle of the night, wrapping up
at 5 am (0300 GMT) on Monday to accommodate the primetime schedule in the United
States.
The pageant included traditional displays of national
costumes, swimwear, and a series of interview questions to test contestants’
public speaking skills. The top 10 showed off intricately bedazzled full-length
gowns in either gold, silver, or bronze.
The Philippines’s Beatrice Luigi Gomez wore an asymmetrical
cut dress with one sleeve, highlighting a new tattoo she said: “celebrates her
womanhood”.
Before Sandhu, two Indians have won the Miss Universe title:
Bollywood actresses Sushmita Sen in 1994 and Lara Dutta in 2000.
Boycott calls
The contest also drew attention in recent weeks for other
reasons, with several contestants defying pressure to boycott in support of the
Palestinians.
A grassroots Palestinian-led boycott movement had urged
contestants to skip the event to protest Israel’s treatment of the
Palestinians.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of Israel wrote: “We urge all participants to withdraw, to avoid complicity
in Israel’s apartheid regime and its violation of Palestinian human rights.”
The 80 contestants also included Miss Morocco Kawtar
Benhalima and Miss Bahrain Manar Nadeem Deyani, whose Muslim-majority nations normalized
ties with Israel last year.
In the end, only Indonesia and Malaysia, nations that do not
have diplomatic relations with Israel, did not send a representative, citing
the global COVID-19 situation, not Israel’s rights record.
South Africa, which also strongly supports the Palestinian
cause, withdrew support for the country’s representative over her
participation, citing “atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinians”.
The United Arab Emirates, which also normalized ties with
Israel last year and where Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made a historic visit
on Sunday, has also not sent a candidate.
But the UAE said that was “due to time constraints” in
selecting its national winner.
‘Colonialism, racism’
Contestants for the pageant landed in Israel late last month
and have since toured sites, sometimes coming under criticism for cultural
insensitivity.
In one stop in the Bedouin city of Rahat, the candidates
wore robes with traditional Palestinian embroidery while rolling grape leaves –
which Gomez tweeted was a “Day in the life of a Bedouin”.
The Bedouin are traditionally nomadic Palestinians who have
long complained of discrimination in housing and education by the Israeli
government.
“Colonialism, racism, cultural appropriation, patriarchy,
whitewashing, all in one place,” tweeted Ines Abdel Razek of the Palestine
Institute for Public Diplomacy, an advocacy group.
In an interview last month, Meza urged contestants to leave
politics out of the pageant, saying the gathering was meant to bring together
women from different backgrounds.
“When you are in there, you forget about politics, about
your religion,” she told The Associated Press news agency at the time.
Sara Salansky, an official with the Israeli tourism
ministry, said the country was selected to host the contest earlier this year
because of Israel’s successful coronavirus vaccination programme.
The contest suffered a last-minute hiccup with the arrival
of the Omicron variant, which forced Israel to close its borders to foreign
tourists late last month.
Most of the Miss Universe contestants were already in the
country before the new regulations came into effect. But those who came
afterward were given special permission to enter, albeit with a mandatory
72-hour quarantine period.
Throughout the run-up to Sunday’s contest, all contestants
were tested for the coronavirus every 48 hours and required to obey strict mask
requirements.
Amid all the safeguards, France’s contestant, Clemence
Botino, tested positive for COVID-19 shortly after arriving in Israel. After 10
days in quarantine, she was declared virus-free last week and allowed to rejoin
the competition.
Last year’s pageant was delayed due to the pandemic before
Meza was crowned in May of this year for her abbreviated tenure.
Participants in the pageant, which was co-owned by Donald
Trump before he became US president, must be between the ages of 18 and 28 and
should not be married or have a child.
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