A 12-year-old girl was forced to pull out of a chess tournament in Malaysia after an organiser said her knee-length dress was seductive and a “temptation” when viewed from a “certain angle”.
Writing on Facebook, the girl’s coach Kaushal Khandar said his student had been “extremely embarrassed” and “disturbed” by the actions of the National Scholastic Chess Championship 2017 director and chief arbiter.
He claimed the director made a remark about the girl’s knee-length dress to the chief arbiter, who stopped her competition in the second round and told her that her dress was “improper”.
Mr Khandar said: “My student and her mother were told that the director deemed my student’s dress to be ‘seductive’ and a ‘temptation from a certain angle far, far away’.
“We found this statement completely out of line!”
The girl, a district chess champion from Kuala Lumpur, was forced to withdraw from the competition in the nearby city of Putrajaya as she couldn’t find a ‘suitable’, less seductive, outfit in time for the next round.
“We are absolutely disgusted by the treatment of a 12-year-old girl and her mother,” Mr Kaushal said.
“We demand a public apology. In the event we do not receive a public apology in the next five days, we shall have no choice but to resort to legal proceedings.”
A Malaysian Chess Federation spokesman told Malay Mail Online that it was investigating the incident.
The coach’s Facebook post was accompanied by a photograph of the girl’s striped knee-length dress.
The director’s words have caused a storm on social media, with netizens roundly condemning his words. One Facebook user wrote: “Seductive?! What was he even doing looking for a certain angle? The only problem here is in the sick old man’s own mind!”
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