Asia (Page 1,303)

A new report that details the oppressive working conditions and widespread sexual abuse against people in Malayalam-language movies is causing major changes in India’s entertainment sector.

However, the messages of solidarity and support have generally come from women, and critics claim that the silence of strong men, including India’s biggest and most adored stars, is audible.

The Hema Committee statement, based on the testimony of 51 people from the Kerala-based film industry, exposes years of abuse and claims that “women have been asked to make themselves accessible for sex on demand” and that they were repeatedly told to create” sacrifice and changes” if they wanted to work.

People in Cinema Collective (WCC), a group of females working in Malayalam film, petitioned the government in 2017 after an alleged best male actor allegedly sexually assaulted a top celebrity by a group of men. The panel was established in 2017.

Their 290-page report was made public last month, with portions of the victims ‘ and those who had been accused of harassment being redacted.

However, some women have formally acknowledged their ordeal since its launch on August 19 and more than a hundred police complaints have been filed against prominent men, including directors, producers, and other women.

In order to ensure that the survivors will ultimately receive justice, the Kerala high court has requested the establishment of a special investigation team ( SIT ) to investigate the allegations and the state government has requested that the SIT conduct an investigation.

People in all Indian movie industries, including the biggest and most well-known Bollywood, have frequently spoken about the practice of men asking for sexual favors in exchange for roles and the pervasive sexual harassment they experience.

Film writer and creator Shubhra Gupta told the BBC,” The fester is as strong as the sea across all American film industries.” Nowhere in the state has a single feminine actor who has not suffered. If anyone came over to talk, it will take us several years to deal with all those complaints”.

The shocking revelations about the state of Malayalam film have caused controversy and have been discussed on nighttime TV. Deedi Damodaran, a WCC part, told the BBC that the answer has been “overwhelming”.

Some people have now described how they had to leave the sector because of the bad things that transpired. They have no facts, but they’ve got some sort of closing by talking about their experience”.

Many of them, she says, have spoken out despite being trolled and abused on social media.

The statement has also created vibrations in other picture companies, with calls for reform being heard in local companies based in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.

In Telangana, pressure has grown on the government to publish a report on the Telugu film industry that’s been waiting to see the light of the day for two years. An inquiry was instituted after an upcoming actress, Sri Reddy, protested by stripping down to her undergarments in public in 2018 “to draw attention to the sexual exploitation of women in the industry”.

West Bengal has set up a committee to investigate allegations of sexual abuse in the Bengali film industry, actress Ritabhari Chakraborty has said. This, she added, would “cleanse the industry from predators”.

Ladies in Tamil and Kannada film have even submitted petitions to their state governments asking for better working conditions for them.

Veteran Tamil artist Radhika Sarathkumar told the BBC that “men may be scared now” and that the Hema commission report has raised a lot of attention.

” It’s time women in cinema get together and speak up and stop this nonsense”, she said.

But the lack of support from the men in the industry, says Damodaran, has been disappointing.

Malayalam superstars Mohanlal and Mammootty have welcomed the report but said that nothing should be done to hurt the industry.

These heroes are revered as larger than life, but we’re awaiting their bravery, Damodaran told the BBC.

In Tamil Nadu, actor-politicians Kamal Haasan and Vijay’s silence has been noted, while Rajinikanth faced criticism for claiming ignorance of the report 10 days after its release.

” The harassment occurs every single one of us; why do men not know about it?” Maybe the male actors compartmentalise, maybe they choose not to see it”, Sarathkumar told the BBC. ” It’s very sad that every time the onus in on the women to protect themselves”.

Some have also pointed out that Akshay Kumar, Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan, Aamir Khan, and others have all made the decision to remain silent.

Gupta says their silence may be deafening, but it’s not unexpected. “I would’ve been very surprised if there had been a reaction. We saw what happened in 2018 after the #MeToo movement first started in Bollywood after actress Tanushree Dutta accused an actor of behaving inappropriately towards her on a film set in 2008.”

There was a groundswell of support for a while, and it appeared that Bollywood would take action. But then things were contained. None of the men suffered any consequences, they are all back to doing what they did. In fact, the women who complained did n’t get work”.

A key criticism of Bollywood is that, unlike other industries, none of its leading actresses have addressed gender issues.

Dutta, who received little support from her A-lister peers and has since claimed that she has been denied work, has described the Hema committee report as “useless”, adding that earlier reports about making workplaces safer for women had not helped.

Gupta claims that one of the reasons stars do n’t speak out might be to avoid trouble for themselves.

“ I think they keep quiet because they know the stakes are high, they are fearful of not getting work in the industry. Remember the time when Aamir Khan or Shahrukh Khan spoke about intolerance? They got trolled heavily and lost out on work.”

Damodaran, however, says the response to the report has given her cause for optimism.

” Film industries in India are deeply patriarchal and misogynistic. However, we ca n’t continue to practice the sexism and misogyny that women experience at work. Things must change, and they must.

A team of scientists claims that beyond a shadow of a doubt, the Covid crisis started with infected pets sold at a business rather than a lab leak.

They were analysing plenty of samples collected from Wuhan, China, in January 2020.

A list of creatures, including racoon canines, civets, and bamboo rats, are identified by the findings as possible sources of the crisis.

Even mentioning one market stall as a hub for both creatures and coronavirus, the research is unable to provide conclusive evidence.

One of the most incredibly important scientifically-based sources of data on the pandemic’s causes was taken by Chinese officials during the first stages of Covid.

When people in Wuhan facilities presented with a secret asthma, a first association with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was established.

Groups swabbed locations like stalls, the interior of bird cages, and products used to remove hair and feathers from slaughtered animals when the market was closed.

Their analysis was published last year and the raw data made available to other scientists. Now a team in the US and France says they have performed even more advanced genetic analyses to peer deeper into Covid’s early days.

To find out what animals and viruses were on the industry in January 2020, it involved analysing thousands of small fragments of genetic code, both DNA and RNA.

” We are seeing the DNA and RNA souls of these creatures in the economic specimens, and some are in booths where]the Covid disease ] was found too”, says Prof Florence Débarre, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

The results, published in the journal Cell, highlight a series of findings that come together to make their case.

It demonstrates that both vulnerable animals and Covid disease were found in the same location, with some swabs containing both the genetic code of coronavirus and the animal. This points to very specific areas because it is n’t evenly distributed throughout the industry.

According to Prof Kristian Andersen from the Scripps Institute in the US,” we find a pretty continuous history in terms of this pointing- even at the level of a second stall” to the market as being the very good source of this particular pandemic.

But, being in the same place at the same time is certainly proof any animals were infected.

The common squirrel dog was the animal that most often appeared in the samples. In experiments, it has been demonstrated that this can both capture and convey Covid.

Hoary wood rats, Malayan porcupines, and the veiled palm civet, which was also linked to the Sars outbreak in 2003, were among the different animals that were linked to the pandemic. The virus-spreading experimentation has not been conducted.

The breadth of the genomic analysis allowed for the identification of the particular fox dog breeds being offered. In contrast to those raised for their leather, they were more prevalent in South China’s crazy. Experts are given ideas about where to look second thanks to this.

The research team also compared the popular samples from patients in the early stages of the pandemic and examined the hereditary code of the examples found on the market. Looking at the variety of different abnormalities in the popular tests also provides hints.

The tests provide no evidence that Covid entered the market more than once, leading to two potential spillovers between animals and people. The researchers claim that this supports the idea that the business is the cause rather than the pandemic beginning elsewhere with the business igniting a superspreading event.

The abnormalities were also used by the scientists to reconstruct the disease’s family tree and examine its past.

These two overlap, according to Prof. Andersen, when we determine when the pandemic started and when we determine when the pandemic at the business started.

The entire coronavirus family that existed at the start of the epidemic was discovered at the business in their scientific publication.

The business segments are distributed across all the tree’s trees, according to Professor Michael Worobey of the University of Arizona, in a way that is consistent with the biological diversity that actually begins at the marketplace.

He claimed that Covid had an animal source, in addition to this study and other data, such as premature cases and hospitalizations that were related to the market.

According to Prof. Worobey,” It’s way beyond reasonable doubt that this is how it happened,” and that other data-related theories necessitated “really imaginative absurd scenarios.”

” I believe there has been a lack of understanding about how powerful the information is, even up until now.”

The Wuhan Institute of Virology ( WIV ), which has long studied coronaviruses, is the source of the virus, according to the lab-leak theory, which claims it originated from wildlife rather than spilling over from it.

It is located a 40-minute pull away from the market. The US knowledge society was asked to assess the likelihood of a leak, whether it had been intentionally or not.

All the organizations involved in the investigation said a hole or possible animal causes were possible in June 2023.

Animals were the most probable cause, according to the National Intelligence Council and four other organizations. It was more likely to be a experiment event, according to the FBI and the DOE.

Prof Andersen said:” To some this seems like the most likely situation- ‘ the lab is best it, of course it was the lab, are you terrible? ‘. I completely get that debate”.

Nevertheless, he says there is now many of information that “really points to the business as the real first core” and “even sites within that business”.

Finding the animals that might have caused the pandemic can give researchers some clues as to where to look for more proof of an animal nature.

There does no longer be any information to be found because fields destroyed their pets in the early days of Covid.

” In all likelihood, we missed our possibility”, says Prof Worobey.

Prof Alice Hughes, from the University of Hong Kong, who was not involved in the study, said it was a” great research”.

” ]But ] without swabs from the actual animals in the market, which were not collected, we cannot obtain any higher certainty”.

Prof James Wood, the co-director of Cambridge Infectious Diseases, said the investigation provided “very solid information” of the pandemic beginning in animals stalls at the business. He claimed that because the samples were taken after the business closed and the pandemic likely started weeks earlier, it could not be clear.

And he warned that “little or nothing” was being done to stop the life industry in animals, and that “uncontrolled transmission of bird attacks poses a serious risk of future pandemics.”