title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta, who describes herself as having been a tomboy as a child, has emphasised her father's military background as having given her a lasting impression on how family life was to be conducted. He asserted the importance of discipline and punctuality to the children. She studied at the Convent of Jesus and Mary boarding school in Shimla. Although she confesses to loneliness in the boarding school, she noted that it was compensated by her finding a "...perfect set of friends" there. As a student, she developed a love for literature, particularly the works of William Shakespeare and poetry. According to Zinta, she enjoyed schoolwork and received good grades; in her free time she played sports, especially basketball.


title: Preity Zinta

text: After her schooling at Convent of Jesus and Mary, Shimla, Zinta enrolled at St. Bede's College in Shimla. She graduated with an English honours degree, and then started a graduate programme in psychology. She earned a postgraduate degree in criminal psychology, but later took up modelling. Zinta's first television commercial was for "Perk" chocolates, the result of a chance meeting with a director at a friend's birthday party in 1996. The director persuaded Zinta to audition for the spot, and she was selected. Afterwards, she appeared in other catalogues and commercials, including one for the soap Liril.


title: Preity Zinta

text: In 1997, Zinta met Shekhar Kapur when she accompanied a friend to an audition in Mumbai, and was asked if she would audition too. Upon seeing her audition, Kapur insisted that she become an actress. She was originally scheduled to make her screen debut in Kapur's "Tara Rum Pum Pum" opposite Hrithik Roshan, but the filming was cancelled. She reminisced the experience: "I began to recognise the power of destiny. I had no intention ever to be an actress." Kapur later recommended her for director Mani Ratnam's "Dil Se.." (1998), a romantic thriller about a terrorist group in New Delhi. Zinta often recalls that when she joined the film industry her friends teased her that she would typically "wear white saris and dance in the rain", thereby motivating her to play different parts.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta commenced shooting for Kundan Shah's "Kya Kehna", whose release was delayed until 2000. The delay of another film, "Soldier" (1998), meant that her first release was "Dil Se.." opposite Shahrukh Khan and Manisha Koirala. She was introduced as Preeti Nair, a middle-class Delhi girl and Khan's fiancée. The film was considered an unusual launch for a newcomer, as her role called for only twenty minutes of screen time. However, she was eventually noticed for her role, particularly for the forthright character she played. Her scene with Khan, in which she asked him, "Are you a virgin?", became well-known, and her portrayal earned her a nomination for the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress. Khalid Mohamed of "Bombay Talkies" said that she "radiates confidence and spunk even if she's given just scraps of footage". The film did not attract a wide audience in India but was the first Hindi film to enter the UK's top 10 box-office charts. Zinta's second release of 1998 was Abbas–Mustan-directed action-drama "Soldier", one of the biggest commercial hits of the year. She won the Filmfare Award for Best Female Debut for her performance in both "Dil Se.." and "Soldier".


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta next acted in two Telugu films, "Premante Idera" (1998) and "Raja Kumarudu" (1999). She followed with the leading role in "Sangharsh", a 1999 thriller directed by Tanuja Chandra and written by Mahesh Bhatt. Zinta portrayed Reet Oberoi, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officer who falls in love with a captured killer played by Akshay Kumar. Having been impressed with Zinta's work in "Dil Se..", Chandra approached her for the part after several leading actresses had refused the offer, which Zinta viewed as an opportunity to expand her range. "Sangharsh" was not a box-office success, although Zinta's performance received favourable comments by critics. An article published by "The Tribune" described her performance as "an amazing act" in an "intense film", documenting her career path thus far with the observation: "She wowed the audiences with her cameo in "Dil Se..", then she zapped the viewers with her sensuality in "Soldier" and now Preity Zinta is all set to shock everybody with her stark performance [in "Sangharsh"]." Subhash K. Jha reflected in 2013 that "Sangharsh" marked a rare occasion in Hindi cinema at the time where a top male star played a secondary role to the leading lady.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta's first role in 2000 was in the drama "Kya Kehna", which exceeded expectations to emerge a major box office success. The film addressed themes of single parenthood and teenage pregnancy, and gained Zinta wider recognition from the public as well as film critics. Her portrayal of Priya Bakshi, a teenage single mother who fights social prejudice, earned her several award nominations, including her first nomination for Best Actress at the Filmfare Awards. Anupama Chopra from "India Today" reported that Zinta belonged to a new breed of Hindi film actors that breaks away from character stereotypes. Further positive feedback came her way that year for her starring role in the romantic comedy "Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega". She next appeared alongside Sanjay Dutt and Hrithik Roshan in Vidhu Vinod Chopra's drama "Mission Kashmir" (2000). Set in the valley of Kashmir during the Indo-Pakistani conflicts, the film dealt with the topic of terrorism and crime; it was an economic success, becoming the year's third-highest-grossing release in India. Zinta's role was that of Sufiya Parvez, a TV reporter and Roshan's childhood love. A review in "The Hindu" noted her for lending colour to an otherwise serious subject matter, and she shared similar sentiments about the character, citing its positive nature within the dark film as having sparked her interest in the part.


title: Preity Zinta

text: In 2001, Zinta was paired with Sunny Deol in the action film "Farz". Her role was dismissed by critics, and the film failed commercially. Abbas–Mustan's family drama "Chori Chori Chupke Chupke" was released later that year after a one-year delay due to the trial of producer Bharat Shah and opened to a wide audience. One of the first Hindi films to address the controversial issue of surrogate childbirth, it starred Zinta as Madhubala, a golden-hearted prostitute hired as a surrogate mother. Initially reluctant to play the part, she eventually accepted it at the directors' persuasion and, to prepare for it, visited several bars and nightclubs at Mumbai's red-light areas to study the lingo and mannerisms of sex-workers. Reviews of the film were varied, but critics singled out Zinta for praise. She received a second Best Supporting Actress nomination at the Filmfare Awards for her performance, of which reviewer Sukanya Verma wrote: "Preity Zinta, who clearly has the meatiest part of all, makes the best of it. Her transformation from the cocky and unabashed prostitute to a sensitive and warm person is amazingly believable."


title: Preity Zinta

text: Two more 2001 releases featured Zinta, "Dil Chahta Hai" and "Yeh Raaste Hain Pyaar Ke". Depicting the contemporary routine life of Indian affluent youth, Farhan Akhtar's coming-of-age "Dil Chahta Hai" is set in modern-day urban Mumbai and focuses on a major period of transition in the lives of three young friends (Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and Akshaye Khanna). Zinta starred as Aamir Khan's love interest, Shalini, who is conflicted about her upcoming marriage to a man she does not love. "Dil Chahta Hai" was popular with critics, some of whom believed it broke new ground by introducing a realistic portrayal of Indian youth. It was named the Best Feature Film in Hindi at the National Film Awards and received the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Film. The film was a moderate box office success in India; it performed well in the big cities but failed in the rural areas, which was attributed by trade analysts to the city-oriented lifestyle it presented. Dinesh Raheja took note of Zinta's "casual and appealing acting", and Sita Menon described her as "beautiful and vibrant, wavering between endearingly naive and confused". Deepak Shivdasani's "Yeh Raaste Hain Pyaar Ke", a romantic drama co-starring Ajay Devgn and Madhuri Dixit, was commercially and critically unsuccessful.


title: Preity Zinta

text: In 2002, Zinta collaborated once again with director Kundan Shah, as the protagonist in the family drama "Dil Hai Tumhaara", alongside Rekha, Mahima Chaudhry and Arjun Rampal. She played Shalu, an adopted daughter craving love, a role she identified with due to its rebellious nature. Billed as a star vehicle for Zinta, "Dil Hai Tumhaara" did not succeed financially, but her portrayal was uniformly acclaimed by critics, with those critical of the film marking her presence as its main highlight. Taran Adarsh from entertainment portal Bollywood Hungama noted: "...Preity Zinta, in an author-backed role... steals the show with a sterling performance... Here's a performance that is sure to win accolades from the junta and critics whole-heartedly."


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta was the lead in India's three highest-grossing films of 2003: "", "Koi... Mil Gaya" and "Kal Ho Naa Ho". "The Hero", co-starring Sunny Deol and Priyanka Chopra, is an action drama about a Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) secret agent on a mission to gather intelligence about terrorist activity from across the border of Kashmir. Zinta played the part of Reshma, a Kashmiri villager who falls in love with the agent and becomes part of this network. The film, involving stunts never seen before in the cinematic history of Bollywood, became the most expensive Hindi film ever produced at the time. The third-highest-grossing film of the year, it was labelled a disappointment against its high production costs. She next starred in Honey Irani's directorial debut, "Armaan"; the drama is set in a hospital and follows the travails of its personnel and its principal, Dr. Akash (Anil Kapoor), who struggles arduously to sustain the institution financially. Zinta played Akash's schizophrenic wife Sonia Kapoor, a role written specially for her and which she considered her best to that point. The film received predominantly positive reviews, and Zinta was particularly praised. Khalid Mohamed called her a "peppy scene-stealer, achieving her manic mood swings dexterously", and Vinayak Chakravorty concluded, "As Sonia, Preity takes over the script and, indeed, the film, unleashing a brilliant act as the deceptively bubbly but manipulative wife." For her performance, she received nominations for Best Performance in a Negative Role at different award ceremonies, including Filmfare.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Rakesh Roshan's science-fiction film "Koi... Mil Gaya", about a developmentally disabled young man (Hrithik Roshan) coming in contact with an alien, followed. Zinta played the role of Nisha, a young woman whom Roshan befriends and later falls in love with. She received another Best Actress nomination at the Filmfare for the role, her portrayal of which was deemed "fresh and inspired" by "The Times of India". The film was a financial and critical success and became the most popular film of the year, as well as Zinta's highest-grossing film, with a domestic total of . "Empire" magazine described it as the "most novel Bollywood movie of the year". It won the Filmfare Award for Best Film, among others, and went on to spawn two superhero films as sequels"Krrish" and "Krrish 3"making it the first of the "Krrish" film series, to which Zinta did not proceed.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta's final release of 2003 was Nikhil Advani's "Kal Ho Naa Ho", a romantic drama set in New York City. The film was received favourably by critics and became India's second-biggest hit of the year after "Koi... Mil Gaya". It also did well internationally and became India's top-grossing film of the year overseas, earning over worldwide. Zinta played Naina Catherine Kapur, an insecure and angry young Indian-American who falls for a man with a fatal heart disease (Shah Rukh Khan). She won several awards for her performance, including the Filmfare Award for Best Actress, the IIFA Award for Best Actress and the Stardust Award for Actor of the Year – Female. Writing for "Stardust", critic Ram Kamal Mukherjee asserted that the film rested "wholly and solely" on Zinta's "astounding performance", noting her for having "skillfully handled the hues of the complex character". Derek Elley wrote, "Zinta, who's been carving a growing following the past three years or so, has never been better, definitively moving from juve roles to a charismatic young woman with her sexy, assured Naina."


title: Preity Zinta

text: In 2004, Zinta played TV journalist Romila Dutta in Farhan Akhtar's war drama "Lakshya", alongside Hrithik Roshan. The film is based on the historical events of the 1999 Kargil War, and Zinta's character is modelled after Barkha Dutt, the only female reporter who covered the conflict. She called it the toughest film she had worked on and said it made her respect journalists. To provide an accurate portrayal, she watched a number of Dutt's television shows and read books on the conflict. The film was a critical success, yet her performance received mixed reviews; Namrata Joshi of "Outlook" likened her to "a teenybopper trying to do a TV newsreading skit for her college fest", and Rediff.com's Rajeev Pai observed that despite a good part, she only "does a fairly decent job of it without ever being spectacular". "Lakshya" failed to attract an audience, grossing against its budget.


title: Preity Zinta

text: For the lead part in his cross-border romance "Veer-Zaara" (2004), Yash Chopra was looking for an actress whose "look and personality could be transformed". Having identified this opportunity in Zinta, who was mostly known for playing Westernised characters, he cast her in the title role of Zaara Haayat Khan, a feisty Pakistani woman whose love story with Indian officer Veer Pratap Singh (Shah Rukh Khan) spans three decades amid trials and tribulations. Highly anticipated pre-release, the film had a strong international release, including a screening at the Berlin International Film Festival, and was named Best Film at major Indian award functions. With revenues of over , it was that year's top-grossing Hindi film both in India and abroad. Zinta's part required her to master the fine nuances of the Urdu language. Though excited at first, she later "got knots in her stomach" worrying about her performance, but Chopra assured her. Her work resulted in a fourth Filmfare Best Actress nomination, among others. Jitesh Pillai wrote of her "tremendous restraint", and Avijit Ghosh of "The Telegraph" likewise believed she had delivered her most nuanced performance. "Variety" hailed her as "the most interesting young actress of her generation". "Veer-Zaara" was Zinta's second highest-grossing film and third major success in two consecutive years.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta starred opposite Govinda in the 2005 folk comedy "Khullam Khulla Pyaar Karen", a production that had been delayed since 2002. The film garnered negative reviews and poor box office returns, and Subhash K. Jha found Zinta's work to be incompatible with her screen image and acting style. Critics and moviegoers were more appreciative that year of Siddharth Anand's comedy-drama "Salaam Namaste", which saw Zinta and Saif Ali Khan as a contemporary cohabiting Indian couple in Australia who deal with an unexpected pregnancy. Produced on a big budget by Yash Raj Films, it was the first Indian feature filmed entirely in Australia and became the year's highest-grossing Bollywood production outside of India and overall third highest-grossing Hindi film, earning . Zinta received a number of Best Actress nominations for playing the protagonist Ambar Malhotra, a single modern young woman who leaves India to make her own life in Melbourne and works as a radio host while studying medicine. Devyani Srivastava of "Mid-Day" considered the independent, strong-minded character of Ambar to be a rare Hindi film heroine, and Taran Adarsh argued that Zinta had given "her most accomplished performance to date". "The New York Times" noted Ambar's negative shades but admired Zinta's positive personality, by which she remains likable even despite uncharitable traits of her characters.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta received further success in 2006, starring in Karan Johar's drama "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" alongside Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji, Abhishek Bachchan, and Amitabh Bachchan. The film became one of the biggest box office hits in India, earning , and grossed over abroad, the biggest Bollywood success of all-time in the overseas market up until then. It was Zinta's fourth overseas top-earner in four consecutive years. Revolving around two unhappily married couples in New York, the film featured Zinta as Rhea Saran, an ambitious fashion magazine editor whose husband begins an adulterous affair with a family acquaintance. She described the part as an attempt to shed her vivacious public image. "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" polarised critics, but "The Indian Express" approved of Zinta's effort, noting her for having "walked with poise, sat with grace, smiled with composure and spoken with calmness". Other reviews questioned the limited length of her role. In later years, "Filmfare" and "Verve" lauded the character for breaking stereotypes of screen portrayals of married women in Hindi films.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta next appeared in Shirish Kunder's romantic musical "Jaan-E-Mann" (2006). She played Piya, the cynosure of two men in the United States (Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar). The film opened to mixed reviews from critics and its eventual box office profit was poor. Despite being mostly criticised for taking a role of minimal importance, she was complimented on her performance and appearance. She said the film was a great relief after the more emotionally intense "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna", as "Jaan-E-Mann" was "easy, happy and much more simple". Even less successful was her next turn as British Pakistani woman Alvira Khan in her third project with Yash Raj Films, the comedy "Jhoom Barabar Jhoom" (2007), co-starring Abhishek Bachchan, Bobby Deol and Lara Dutta. The film was a commercial failure in India and critics panned her performance; "The Times of India" described her as "too plastic" and Rediff.com concluded, "From accent to emotion, Preity is plain and simple insufferable in this film."


title: Preity Zinta

text: Following the failure of two of her commercial releases, Zinta decided to venture into art films, a movement of neo-realistic films known in India as parallel cinema. She acted alongside Amitabh Bachchan in her first English-language film, Rituparno Ghosh's film-within-a-film drama "The Last Lear" (2007). Zinta played Shabnam, a struggling film actress working on a new project opposite Shakespearean actor Harish Mishra (Bachchan) in the midst of a turbulent relationship with her possessive husband. The film premiered at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival and was received well. Later reviews in India were approving, with Rajeev Masand writing that she "gets through her scenes competently, never allowing her cute-as-a-button image to take away from the impact she makes here as a conflicted, mature woman". Sukanya Verma called Zinta "palpably vulnerable" but lamented the English dialogue, finding it distracting "from the seriousness of the situation". "The Last Lear" was named the Best English Film at the 55th National Film Awards. Initially dismissive of art films, Zinta eventually spoke positively of her experiment with the genre, confessing, "I did think with art films that they don't pay you, they don't feed you, but I was wrong, and I'm so happy to be here."


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta next starred in Samir Karnik's "Heroes" (2008), a three-chapter road movie about two film students who, as part of an assignment, travel across North India to deliver three un-posted letters written by army personnel who lost their lives during the 1999 Kargil war to their families. Zinta is featured in the first chapter as Salman Khan's war widow, Kuljeet Kaur, a woman who becomes the sole breadwinner of the family and single-handedly raises her son. In preparation for the role Zinta attended Anupam Kher's acting school, "Actor Prepares" to learn the dialect and mannerisms of a Punjabi woman. The film was released to a mixed critical reaction, but her performance received rave reviews; Anand Singh of "Hindustan Times" wrote: "Karnik is merely interested in wringing tears the old-fashioned way, and not in starting a debate. He succeedsmainly because Preity Zinta brings to a role a gravitas and dignity that is seen on the faces of ordinary womenthis may be her coming of age as an actress."


title: Preity Zinta

text: In the same year she played the leading role of Chand in Deepa Mehta's Canadian film "Heaven on Earth", a Punjabi-language mystical drama based on the true story of a young Indian woman who, after an arranged marriage to a non-resident Indian man from Canada, migrates to Toronto and becomes a victim of severe domestic abuse. Zinta described Mehta as one director she was longing to work with to fulfill her desire for "a new kind of acting challenge". To prepare for the part, she studied extensively the subject of domestic violence and took a crash course in Punjabi, a language that was totally alien to her. She confessed to not being able to emotionally disconnect from the part during the making of the film: "I never knew a character would affect me so deeply. I've become completely withdrawn and introspective... I can't snap out of the character." She eventually called it her most challenging project, as it helped her "shed everything that Preity Zinta was about". "Heaven on Earth" was first screened at several film festivals and garnered career-best reviews for Zinta. Peter Debruge of "Variety" wrote of her "stunning psychological transformation" in the part and Will Sloan labelled her "a revelation". Her performance earned her the Silver Hugo Award for Best Actress at the 2008 Chicago International Film Festival, for "her strong yet subtle performance as a woman struggling to keep her dreams despite brutal realities". She was also nominated for the Genie Award for Best Actress.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Following "Heaven on Earth", Zinta took a two-year sabbatical from films, later explaining that she had chosen to focus on her work with her cricket team. In 2011, she launched her own production company, PZNZ Media. Two years later and following numerous delays, she starred in her first film under the bannerthe Prem Raj-directed romantic comedy "Ishkq in Paris", which she also co-wrote. An Indo-French collaboration, the film saw Zinta as a half-Indian half-French Parisian woman alongside Rhehan Malliek and Isabelle Adjani. Zinta's role required her to learn French and follow a strict diet and fitness regime, for which she hired the services of celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson. Whilst the film bombed at the box office and received mostly negative reviews, Zinta's performance attracted a mixed critical reception. Sonia Chopra of Sify called her "hugely likeable", and added that she is a "good actress, astute producer and... writer". Shilpa Jamkhandikar from "Deccan Herald", critical of both the film and Zinta's work, concluded a scathing review by calling it "a mediocre film, one that was supposed to showcase one of our favourite leading ladies, but instead just shows us what a shadow of her past she's become".


title: Preity Zinta

text: Following a five-year sabbatical, Zinta starred opposite Sunny Deol as an aggressive Varanasi-based wife in Neeraj Pathak's action comedy "Bhaiaji Superhit" (2018). Ajit Duara of "Open" magazine called the film a "rude, sexist, and completely mixed-up farce" and bemoaned that the "once vivacious [Zinta] appears completely disinterested in her surroundings and in her co-actors". In 2020, Zinta appeared alongside Vir Das in an episode of the American sitcom "Fresh Off the Boat", titled "The Magic Motor Inn"; she was set to reprise her role in a spin-off series, centered around her character's family, but in June ABC announced that it would not be moving forward with the spin-off.


title: Preity Zinta

text: In 2004, Zinta joined a group of South Asian commentators for BBC News Online. She expressed joy at participating in the project, saying, "I am pretty outspoken and have my own view on every subject. So it will be a good platform for me to air my views." Her first column, "The changing face of Bollywood", published in January 2004, discussed the evolution of Bollywood in the past decade. The column became one of the site's ten most read stories of the day. In her second column, "Odds stacked against Indian women", Zinta analysed the eve teasing phenomenon in India, and criticised those who practice it. She wrote, "Incidents like these take away a woman's dignity, her space and her freedom... why the state is so helpless in protecting the women. Why should women feel unsafe in a country which had an internationally revered woman prime minister?" The column caught the attention of readers worldwide, and she received thousands of e-mails about it. It was applauded particularly by women for its stand against abuse of Indian women. Her third column, "The darkness that all actors fear", was a more personal column and dealt with her stardom, fans, insecurity and fears as an actor. Her fourth and final column, titled "Facing death in Sri Lanka and Thailand", described her two near-death experiences in late 2004.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta has taken part in several stage shows and world tours since 2001. Her first world tour, a series of concerts called "Craze 2001", was performed across the US alongside Anil Kapoor, Aamir Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Gracy Singh. The show faced early cancellation due to the 11 September 2001 attacks, and the team prepared to return to India as soon as possible. However, the shows continued successfully in Canada. In 2002, she participated in the show "From India With Love" in the UK, along with Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai. It took place at two outdoor venues, Manchester's Old Trafford and London's Hyde Park, with more than 100,000 spectators.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta's largest world tour was in 2004, when she joined a group of stars (Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji, Saif Ali Khan, Arjun Rampal and Priyanka Chopra) in the "Temptation 2004" tour. Showcased in more than 22 countries across the world, it became Bollywood's most prominent international concert. In 2006, Zinta was part of the "Heat 2006" world tour, along with Akshay Kumar, Saif Ali Khan, Sushmita Sen and Celina Jaitley. "The Unforgettable Tour" (2008) saw Zinta performing with the Bachchan family and Ritesh Deshmukh in a forty-day show staged in eleven cities across North America, Europe and the Caribbean. In December 2012 Zinta returned to the stage with the "Temptation Reloaded" concert in Jakarta (joined by Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukerji and Bipasha Basu).


title: Preity Zinta

text: In 2011, Zinta made her television debut as the host of the show "Guinness World Records – Ab India Todega" on Colors Channel. An Indian version of Guinness Book of World Records, the show premiered on 18 March to an audience measurement of 3.3 rating points, which made it occupy the seventh position on the chart of celebrity-driven reality shows on Hindi entertainment channels. In a four-star review for "Hindustan Times", critic Rachana Dubey wrote, "Preity is a riot. She's vivacious and knows exactly when she needs to be serious and when she can crack jokes." Later that year Zinta started hosting the celebrity-based chat show "Up Close & Personal with PZ", shot at her own penthouse in Mumbai and broadcast on the newly launched channel UTV Stars. The first episode aired on 3 September. In 2015, Zinta featured as a talent judge for the seventh season of the dance reality show "Nach Baliye".


title: Preity Zinta

text: During her years in the film industry, Zinta has been involved with different charitable organisations and has particularly supported women's causes in India, for instance protesting against female infanticide. She has also participated in AIDS awareness drives and campaigns to clean up Mumbai.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Along with other Bollywood stars, Zinta performed at the "HELP! Telethon Concert" in 2005 to raise money for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. The following year, as an ambassador of the Godfrey Phillips National Bravery Movement, Zinta attended a blood donation camp organised by the Rotary Club of Delhi and the Godfrey Phillips Awards. She lent her support to the cause of women's empowerment and promoted blood donation. She said, "Donating blood doesn't kill one but goes on to save somebody's life... Once blood is donated it becomes universal and might be used by anyone in need, irrespective of community, caste or region. It binds people together."


title: Preity Zinta

text: In 2007, as part of the NDTV show "Jai Jawan", Zinta visited Hisar, Haryana, where she spent a day at the army training base to boost the morale of the jawan troops and met children with disabilities at a special school maintained by the army. In August, along with Mumbai-based artist Gurcharan Singh, Zinta painted for the cause of street children for the non-governmental organisation Khushi. In December she joined the efforts of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to curb human trafficking in India. She spoke on behalf of awareness against the practice, the need for protection and rehabilitation for those rescued from it, and punishment for perpetrators. In 2009, on her 34th birthday, Zinta adopted 34 girls from the Mother Miracle orphanage in Rishikesh and took the responsibility of financially supporting their education, food and clothing. She expressed her excitement at doing so and recounted her full commitment to their upbringing.


title: Preity Zinta

text: In January 2010 Zinta was appointed the brand ambassador of The Loomba Trust, an organisation that works for the welfare of widows and their children. She said, having lost her father at thirteen, she could relate to the problems faced by widowed women. Later in the year, she joined the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) as their Goodwill Ambassador in India, to promote public awareness on HIV prevention, treatment and support, with emphasis on women and children, and combat discrimination against it. Speaking of her appointment, Zinta expressed hope to be "the voice for the voiceless" and bring about a "transformation in the minds of people" through collaborative work. In October 2010 Zinta was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of East London. It was awarded in honour of both her cultural contribution and her humanitarian work, with the citation describing her as "an international actress, pioneering star of Hindi cinema and devoted humanitarian. Preity has carved a path for women to follow."


title: Preity Zinta

text: Along with Ness Wadia, Mohit Burman and others, Zinta acquired ownership rights in 2008 for the Mohali-based Twenty20 cricket team of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The group paid $76million for the franchise and named the team Kings XI Punjab (it was renamed Punjab Kings in 2021). Until 2009, Zinta was the only woman to own an IPL team, and was the league's youngest owner. She has been involved with launching ticket sales and promoting the team. She said, "My involvement with the team is total. I am extremely passionate about our team and I do believe that I am the team's good luck factor, so I want to be there for everything." In September 2017, she became the owner of the Stellenbosch Kings franchise team of South Africa's Mzansi Super League. Further business expansion took place in 2021 as Zinta and her Punjab Kings partners bought Saint Lucia's representative team in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), which was rebranded as Saint Lucia Kings.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta used to visit her native town Shimla when she was not busy shooting. In 2006, she moved into her own home in Mumbai. She does not identify with any particular religion. In an interview with "The Times of India", she commented: "I believe in good deeds, in karma, I don't believe in going to temples. For me, religion is very personal. It's all about having faith... We have heard and read that all religions are equal. Now I am increasingly believing in this." She narrowly escaped death twice in late 2004: first after an explosion at a Temptation concert in Colombo, Sri Lanka; and second during the Indian Ocean earthquake.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta has been the subject of several controversies. In 2003, as a witness in the Bharat Shah case, she testified against the Indian mafia. Bharat Shah, the financer of "Chori Chori Chupke Chupke", was arrested in 2000 for having connections with Chhota Shakeel, a Mumbai underworld boss. Unlike several of her colleagues, Zinta repeated in court her earlier statement that she had received extortion threats from the mafia during the shooting of the film. After her testimony, she was given witness protection and was forced to stay out of the public eye for two months. Thirteen other witnesses before her, including celebrities Salman Khan and Shahrukh Khan, were witnesses in the case but later retracted their earlier statements. Zinta was the only witness who did not become hostile to the prosecution; the nation responded positively to her actions. Consequently, she was the first recipient of Godfrey's Mind of Steel Award at the annual Red and White Bravery Awards, given to her for the "courageous act" of standing against the Mumbai Underworld. On receiving the award, she said, "To be brave is not to be fearless. It is when you fear and you get over it, then you can be called brave. I am human. It is not that I fear nothing. But getting over a fear is a continuous process and I have been successful so far." Since 2006, Zinta has been the brand ambassador for the Godfrey Phillips Bravery awards.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Tabloids have often linked Zinta romantically with other Bollywood stars, but she has strongly denied any such rumours. In 2000, Zinta began dating model Marc Robinson. They separated the following year, and according to Zinta remained on good terms. Zinta dated the Bombay Dyeing heir, businessman Ness Wadia from February 2005 until May 2009. Their relationship was often reported on by the media, with frequent speculation about an engagement or a break-up. On 13 June 2014, Zinta filed a complaint with the Mumbai police against Ness Wadia alleging he had molested, threatened, and abused her at an IPL match at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on 30 May. Wadia denied the allegations. In 2018, the Bombay High Court quashed this complaint after the issue was amicably settled.


title: Preity Zinta

text: On 29 February 2016, Zinta married her American partner Gene Goodenough at a private ceremony in Los Angeles. Goodenough is Senior Vice-president for Finance at NLine Energy, a US-based hydroelectric power company. Zinta moved to Los Angeles following the marriage; she visits India on a frequent basis. In 2021, she and her husband became parents to twins, a boy and a girl, through surrogacy.


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta is known in the Indian media for her straightforward nature and for honestly expressing her opinions in public, be it about her on-screen or off-screen life or raising a voice against social injustice. While she does not believe she is "as tough as people portray [her] to be", she asserts having no qualms about speaking her mind, even if faced with surmounting opposition, as long as she stands "by what's right". These features were noted during the Bharat Shah case, when she testified against the underworld; following this incident she was often called by journalists "the only man in Bollywood", a label she was unhappy with for its underlying misogynist connotations. Film actor Amitabh Bachchan, describing her as "frank and painfully honest", lauded her "drive and guts in a world that can be most cruel to a single girl". Author and columnist Shobhaa De, while commending her for lodging a molestation complaint against Ness Wadia in 2014, expressed concern regarding Zinta's repeated quest for justice, believing it could eventually play against her: "India is not terribly kind to strong-willed, outspoken women who are dubbed 'trouble makers' if they dare to raise their voices, especially against men. Zinta is such a woman."


title: Preity Zinta

text: Her characteristic dimple has been cited by the media as her trademark. At the beginning of her career, she was often described by the press as having a vivacious personality and a bubbly, outgoing persona, an image she had confessed to disliking. According to film critic Sukanya Verma, Zinta's energetic nature extends from her real life into her screen appearances and is an integral part of her technique. Discussing Hindi film actresses and their flair for comedy, Verma wrote of Zinta: "What can you say about an actress who giggles non-stop in a tone that is anything but prim and propah? She is carefree. She is animated. She talks non-stop. She laughs all the time. She has a chilled out sense of humour. And a tomboyish streak too. Preity Zinta is all that and more. All this greatly contributes to her style of acting."


title: Preity Zinta

text: Director Tanuja Chandra ascribed Zinta's screen appeal to her lack of acting pretense, commenting, "She doesn't act, she's so real that you just can't look away from her." Reviewing "Chori Chori Chupke Chupke" (2001) for "Hindustan Times", Vinayak Chakravorty noted that "there is an admirable zest that Preity pumps into every role she does". Farhan Akhtar, who directed her in two films, believes she is an actress who "can mould herselfthe way she speaks, works and her body languageand adapt herself to roles", while Vidhu Vinod Chopra (director of the 2000 film "Mission Kashmir") credits her with the ability to "make the viewer believe even in the most convoluted situation." In a review of "Salaam Namaste", Australian film critic Jake Wilson observed, "While Preity Zinta isn't the subtlest actress, she's quite a comediennefor a Hollywood equivalent to her combination of beauty, high-strung emotion and facial gymnastics you might have to go back to Natalie Wood." American critic Derek Elley considers her to be "one of Bollywood's best pure actresses."


title: Preity Zinta

text: Following her portrayal of such characters as those in "Sangharsh" (1999), "Kya Kehna" (2000), "Chori Chori Chupke Chupke" (2001), "Salaam Namaste" (2005) and "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" (2006), Zinta was recognised for her versatility and gained a reputation for playing roles that go against Indian traditional mores. These roles were cited by critics as having helped to establish a new image for Indian screen women by means of departure from conventional parts previously played by leading actresses in mainstream Hindi films. Karan Johar describes her as "a new-wave actress" who has the advantage of working at a time when "films portray a woman who knows her mind". Author Monika Mehta notes the similarity between Zinta's public image as an independent and opinionated woman and her culturally defiant character in "Salaam Namaste". According to Jennifer Thomas, who analysed Zinta's roles for a chapter in the book "Once Upon a Time in Bollywood" (2007), Zinta "resists patriarchal constraints through her modern lifestyle and the controversial roles she chooses".


title: Preity Zinta

text: Zinta is one of the best-known celebrities in India; at her career peak she was one of Hindi cinema's most celebrated stars and was acknowledged for having managed a career without any traditional assistance or family relations in the film industry. She featured in Box Office India's top actress listing for seven years and ranked first for two consecutive years (2003–2004). In 2003, Zinta appeared in the number one spot on Rediff.com's "Top Bollywood Female Stars". She was ranked second for the following three years. She has been featured frequently on other Rediff.com lists, including "Bollywood's Most Beautiful Actresses", "Bollywood's Best Dressed Women" and "Women of Many Faces". Between 2006 and 2008 Zinta made three consecutive appearances at the Cannes Film Festival. At first she attended the 2006 Film Festival along with filmmaker Karan Johar to represent the Hindi film industry and promote "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna", returning in later years as the brand ambassador of Chopard, the maker of luxury watches and jewellery.


title: Preity Zinta

text: In September 2006 the UK magazine "Eastern Eye" ranked her among "Asia's Sexiest Women". In 2010, "Time" magazine selected her as one of the candidates for its list of the world's 100 most influential people. She was the only Indian actress nominated for the poll and eventually did not make it to the final list, ranked at 144. This was followed, however, by a marked period of decline in her popularity when she restricted her work in films, which was further decreased with the debacle of her self-produced comeback vehicle. Film journalists like Khalid Mohamed and Subhash K. Jha have written columns in which they lament her absence from the movies and encourage her to return to acting.


title: Muay Thai

text: Muay Thai (, , ), sometimes referred to as Thai boxing, is a combat sport that uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques. This discipline is known as the "art of eight limbs", as it is characterised by the combined use of fists, elbows, knees and shins. Muay Thai became widespread internationally in the late 20th to 21st century, when Westernised practitioners from Thailand began competing in kickboxing and mixed-rules matches as well as matches under muay Thai rules around the world. The professional league is governed by The Professional Boxing Association of Thailand (P.A.T), sanctioned by The Sports Authority of Thailand (S.A.T.).


title: Muay Thai

text: Muay Thai is related to other martial art styles such as musti-yuddha, Adimurai, muay Chaiya, muay boran, muay Lao, lethwei, pradal serey and tomoi. Muay Thai developed from the traditional muay boran. A practitioner of muay Thai is known as a "nak muay". Western practitioners in Thailand are sometimes called "nak muay farang", meaning "foreign boxer".


title: Muay Thai

text: The history of muay Thai can be traced at least to the 16th century as a peace-time martial art practised by the soldiers of King Naresuan. An exhibition of muay Thai was observed and reported by Simon de la Loubère, a French diplomat who was sent by King Louis XIV to the Kingdom of Siam in 1687, in his famous work and the Ayutthaya Kingdom Burmese–Siamese War (1765–1767) Muay boran, and therefore muay Thai, was originally called by more generic names such as "toi muay" or simply "muay". As well as being a practical fighting technique for use in actual warfare, muay became a sport in which the opponents fought in front of spectators who went to watch for entertainment. These muay contests gradually became an integral part of local festivals and celebrations, especially those held at temples. Eventually, the previously bare-fisted fighters started wearing lengths of hemp rope around their hands and forearms. This type of match was called "muay khat chueak" (มวยคาดเชือก).


title: Muay Thai

text: The ascension of King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) to the throne in 1868 ushered in a golden age not only for muay but for the whole country of Thailand. Muay progressed greatly during the reign of Rama V as a direct result of the king's personal interest in the sport. The country was at peace and muay functioned as a means of physical exercise, self-defense, attacking, recreation and personal advancement.


title: Muay Thai

text: 1909-1910: King Chulalongkorn formalized "muay boran" ("ancient boxing") by awarding (in 1910) three "muen" to victors at the funeral fights for his son (in 1909). The region style: Lopburi, Korat and Chaiya.


title: Muay Thai

text: 1913: British boxing was introduced into the curriculum of the Suan Kulap College. The first descriptive use of the term "muay Thai".


title: Muay Thai

text: 1919: British boxing and muay Thai were taught as one sport in the curriculum of the Suan Kulap College. Judo was also offered.


title: Muay Thai

text: 1923: Suan Sanuk Stadium. First international style three-rope ring with red and blue padded corners, near Lumpinee Park. Muay and British boxing.


title: Muay Thai

text: King Rama VII (r. 1925–1935) pushed for codified rules for muay and they were put into place. Thailand's first boxing ring was built in 1921 at Suan Kulap. Referees were introduced and rounds were now timed by kick. Fighters at the Lumpinee Boxing Stadium began wearing modern gloves, as well as hard groin protectors, during training and in boxing matches against foreigners. Traditional rope-binding ("khat chueak") made the hands a hardened, dangerous striking tool. The use of knots in the rope over the knuckles made the strikes more abrasive and damaging for the opponent while protecting the hands of the fighter. This rope-binding was still used in fights between Thais but after a death in the ring, it was decided that fighters should wear gloves and cotton coverlets over the feet and ankles. It was also around this time that the term "muay Thai" became commonly used, while the older form of the style came to be known as "muay boran", which is now performed primarily as an exhibition art form.


title: Muay Thai

text: Muay Thai was at the height of its popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. Top fighters commanded purses of up to 200,000 baht and the stadia where gambling was legal drew big gates and big advertising revenues. In 2016, a payout to a superstar fighter was about 100,000 baht per fight, but can range as high as 540,000 baht for a bout.


title: Muay Thai

text: In 1993, the International Federation of Muaythai Amateur, or IFMA was inaugurated. It became the governing body of amateur muay Thai consisting of 128 member countries worldwide and is recognised by the Olympic Council of Asia.


title: Muay Thai

text: In 1995, the World Muaythai Council, the oldest and largest professional sanctioning organisations of muay Thai, was established by the Thai government and sanctioned by the Sports Authority of Thailand.


title: Muay Thai

text: In 1995, the World Muay Thai Federation was founded by the merger of two existing organisations, and established in Bangkok, becoming the federation governing international muay Thai. In August 2012, it had over 70 member countries. Its president is elected at the World Muay Thai Congress.


title: Muay Thai

text: In 2006, muay Thai was included in SportAccord with IFMA. One of the requirements of SportAccord was that no sport can have a name of a country in its name. As a result, an amendment was made in the IFMA constitution to change the name of the sport from "muay Thai" to "muaythai" —written as one word in accordance with Olympic requirements.


title: Muay Thai

text: In 2014, muay Thai was included in the International World Games Association (IWGA) and was represented in the official programme of The World Games 2017 in Wrocław, Poland.


title: Muay Thai

text: In January 2015, muay Thai was granted the patronage of the International University Sports Federation (FISU) and, from 16 to 23 March 2015, the first University World Muaythai Cup was held in Bangkok.


title: Muay Thai

text: According to IFMA rules and regulations, muaythai is a martial art of using every part of the body limbs therefore making every strike including punch, kick, knee and elbow are allowed.


title: Muay Thai

text: Generally, for a strike to count towards the point score, it has to hit without being blocked or guarded against by the opponent. Strikes also do not score if they hit the opponent's glove, forearm, foot, or shin. Strikes to the groin are against the rules and if found to be intentional are counted as fouls.


title: Muay Thai

text: If both muaythai fighters have the same score at the end of the round, the winner is determined by which fighter has the more powerful strike.


title: Muay Thai

text: Timeline of International Federation of Muaythai Associations (IFMA) from founding to International Olympic Committee (IOC) recognition:


title: Muay Thai

text: The "mongkhon", or "mongkol" (headband), and "pra jiad" (armbands) are often worn into the ring before the match begins. They originated when Siam was in a constant state of war. Young men would tear off pieces of a loved one's clothing (often a mother's "sarong") and wear it in battle for good luck as well as to ward off harmful spirits. In modern times, the "mongkol" (lit. "holy spirit", "luck", "protection") is worn as a tribute to the fighter's gym. The "mongkol" is traditionally presented by a trainer to the fighter when he judges that the fighter is ready to represent the gym in the ring. Often, after the fighter has finished the "wai kru", the trainer will take the "mongkol" off his head and place it in his corner of the ring for luck. They were also used for protection. Whether the fighter is a Buddhist or not, it is common for them to bring the "mongkol" to a Buddhist monk who blesses it for good luck prior to stepping into the ring.


title: Muay Thai

text: Formal muay Thai techniques are divided into two groups: "mae mai" (แม่ไม้), or "major techniques", and "luk mai" (ลูกไม้), or "minor techniques". Muay Thai is often a fighting art of attrition, where opponents exchange blows with one another. This is certainly the case with traditional stylists in Thailand, but is a less popular form of fighting in the contemporary world fighting circuit where the Thai style of exchanging blow for blow is no longer favorable. Almost all techniques in muay Thai use the entire body movement, rotating the hip with each kick, punch, elbow and block.


title: Muay Thai

text: The punch techniques in muay Thai were originally quite limited, being crosses and a long (or lazy) circular strike made with a straight (but not locked) arm and landing with the heel of the palm. Cross-fertilisation with Western boxing and Western martial arts mean the full range of western boxing punches are now used: lead jab, straight/cross, hook, uppercut, shovel and corkscrew punches and overhands, as well as hammer fists and back fists.


title: Muay Thai

text: As a tactic, body punching is used less in muay Thai than most other striking combat sports to avoid exposing the attacker's head to counter strikes from knees or elbows. To utilize the range of targeting points, in keeping with the centre line theory, the fighter can use either the Western or Thai stance which allows for either long range or short range attacks to be undertaken effectively without compromising guard.


title: Muay Thai

text: The elbow can be used in several ways as a striking weapon: horizontal, diagonal-upwards, diagonal-downwards, uppercut, downward, backward-spinning,and flying. From the side, it can be used as either a finishing move or as a way to cut the opponent's eyebrow so that blood might block his vision. The diagonal elbows are faster than the other forms but are less powerful. The elbow strike is considered the most dangerous form of attack in the sport.


title: Muay Thai

text: There is a distinct difference between a single elbow and a follow-up elbow. The single elbow is a move independent from any other, whereas a follow-up elbow is the second strike from the same arm, being a hook or straight punch first with an elbow follow-up. Such elbows, and most other elbow strikes, are used when the distance between fighters becomes too small and there is too little space to throw a hook at the opponent's head.


title: Muay Thai

text: Elbows can be used to great effect as blocks or defences against, for example, spring knees, side body knees, body kicks or punches. When well connected, an elbow strike can cause serious damage to the opponent, including cuts or even a knockout.


title: Muay Thai

text: The two most common kicks in muay Thai are known as the "thip" (literally "foot jab") and the "te chiang" (kicking upwards in the shape of a triangle cutting under the arm and ribs), or roundhouse kick. The Thai roundhouse kick uses a rotational movement of the entire body and has been widely adopted by practitioners of other combat sports. It is done from a circular stance with the back leg just a little ways back (roughly shoulder width apart) in comparison to instinctive upper body fighting (boxing) where the legs must create a wider base. The roundhouse kick draws its power almost entirely from the rotational movement of the hips, counter-rotation of the shoulders and arms are also often used to add torque to the lower body and increase the power of the kick as well.


title: Muay Thai

text: If a roundhouse kick is attempted by the opponent, the Thai boxer will normally check the kick, that is, he will block the kick with the outside of his lower leg. Thai boxers are trained to always connect with the shin. The foot contains many fine bones and is much weaker. A fighter may end up hurting himself if he tries to strike with his foot or instep. Shins are trained by repeatedly striking firm objects, such as pads or heavy bags.


title: Muay Thai

text: The foot-thrust, or literally, "foot jab", is one of the techniques in muay Thai. It is mainly used as a defensive technique to control distance or block attacks. Foot-thrusts should be thrown quickly but with enough force to knock an opponent off balance.


title: Muay Thai

text: In Western boxing, the two fighters are separated when they clinch; in muay Thai, however, they are not. It is often in the clinch that knee and elbow techniques are used. To strike and bind the opponent for both offensive and defensive purposes, small amounts of stand-up grappling are used in the clinch. The front clinch should be performed with the palm of one hand on the back of the other. There are three reasons why the fingers must not be intertwined. 1) In the ring fighters are wearing boxing gloves and cannot intertwine their fingers. 2) The Thai front clinch involves pressing the head of the opponent downwards, which is easier if the hands are locked behind the back of the head instead of behind the neck. Furthermore, the arms should be putting as much pressure on the neck as possible. 3) A fighter may incur an injury to one or more fingers if they are intertwined, and it becomes more difficult to release the grip in order to quickly elbow the opponent's head.


title: Muay Thai

text: A correct clinch also involves the fighter's forearms pressing against the opponent's collar bone while the hands are around the opponent's head rather than the opponent's neck. The general way to get out of a clinch is to push the opponent's head backward or elbow them, as the clinch requires both participants to be very close to one another. Additionally, the non-dominant clincher can try to "swim" their arm underneath and inside the opponent's clinch, establishing the previously non-dominant clincher as the dominant clincher.


title: Muay Thai

text: Defensively, the concept of "wall of defence" is used, in which shoulders, arms and legs are used to hinder the attacker from successfully executing techniques. Blocking is a critical element in muay Thai and compounds the level of conditioning a successful practitioner must possess. Low and mid body roundhouse kicks are normally blocked with the upper portion of a raised shin (this block is known as a "check"). High body strikes are blocked ideally with the forearms and shoulder together, or if enough time is allowed for a parry, the glove (elusively), elbow, or shin will be used. Midsection roundhouse kicks can also be caught/trapped, allowing for a sweep or counter-attack to the remaining leg of the opponent. Punches are blocked with an ordinary boxing guard and techniques similar, if not identical, to basic boxing technique. A common means of blocking a punch is using the hand on the same side as the oncoming punch. For example, if an orthodox fighter throws a jab (being the left hand), the defender will make a slight tap to redirect the punch's angle with the right hand. The deflection is always as small and precise as possible to avoid unnecessary energy expenditure and return the hand to the guard as quickly as possible. Hooks are often blocked with a motion sometimes described as "combing the hair", that is, raising the elbow forward and effectively shielding the head with the forearm, flexed biceps and shoulder. More advanced muay Thai blocks are usually in the form of counter-strikes, using the opponent's weight (as they strike) to amplify the damage that the countering opponent can deliver. This requires impeccable timing and thus can generally only be learned by many repetitions.


title: Muay Thai

text: In 2016, 9,998 children under the age of 15 were registered with Board of Boxing under the Sport Authority of Thailand, according to the Child Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Centre (CSIP). Some estimates put the number of child boxers nationwide at between 200,000 and 300,000, some as young as four years old.


title: Muay Thai

text: The Advanced Diagnostic Imaging Centre (AIMC) at Ramathibodi Hospital studied 300 child boxers aged under 15 with two to more than five years of experience, as well as 200 children who do not box. The findings show that child boxers not only sustain brain injuries, they also have a lower IQ, about 10 points lower than average levels. Moreover, IQ levels correlate with the length of their training. Beyond brain damage, the death of young fighters in the ring sometimes occurs.


title: Muay Thai

text: Adisak Plitapolkarnpim, director of CSIP, was indirectly quoted (in 2016) as having said that muay Thai practitioners "younger than 15 years old are being urged to avoid 'head contact' to reduce the risk of brain injuries, while children aged under nine should be banned from the combat fight"; furthermore, the Boxing Act's minimum age to compete professionally was largely being flouted; furthermore, quoted indirectly, "Boxers aged between 13 and 15" should still be permitted to compete, but "with light contact to the head and face". He said that "spectators and a change in the boxing rules can play a vital role in preventing child boxers from suffering brain injuries, abnormality in brain structure, Parkinson's disease and early-onset Alzheimer's later in life...Children aged between nine and 15 can take part in [Thai] boxing, but direct head contact must not be allowed". Referring to "Findings [of 2014] on the Worst Forms of Child Labour" as published by the US Department of Labor's Bureau of International Labor Affairs, he said, "We know Muay Thai paid fighters have been exploited in the past like child labourers and the matter still remains a serious concern."


title: Muay Thai

text: At the 13th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion in 2018, it was revealed that up to three percent of the upcoming generation will grow up with learning disabilities unless an amendment is ratified that bans children under 12 from participating in boxing matches. International pediatricians have called on lawmakers in Thailand to help.


title: Muay Thai

text: Muay Thai is a combat sport that utilises eight different parts of the body (fists, elbows, knees and shins) so injuries are quite common in all levels of muay Thai. An injury is considered reportable if it requires the athlete to rest for more than one day. Many injuries in the sport go unreported as the fighters may not notice the injuries at first, refuse to admit that they need treatment, have a heightened pain threshold, fear that their instructor will perceive the injury negatively, or have confusion as to what is an injury. Similar to most sports, injury rates tend to be higher in beginners than amateurs and professionals. Soft tissue injuries are the most common form of injury in muay Thai, comprising between 80 and 90% of all injuries. These injuries are caused by repeated trauma to soft parts of the body. During matches there is little to no padding, leaving soft tissue vulnerable to strikes. The second most common injuries among beginners and amateurs are sprains and strains. It appears that these injuries can be easily avoided or reduced. Many participants of a study admitted to inadequate warm up before the event of the injury. The third most common injuries are fractures. Fractures are more commonly seen with amateur and professional fighters, because they are allowed full contact, while beginners are not. The most common sites for fractures are the nose, carpal bones, metacarpals, digits and ribs. The distribution of injuries differs significantly for beginners, amateurs and professionals, because as a fighter progresses through the different levels, the forces involved grow progressively higher, less padding and protective equipment is used, and athletes are likely to train harder, resulting in more serious injuries among experienced fighters.


title: Muay Thai

text: According to a "Bangkok Post" columnist, "...Thai professional boxing is all about gambling and big money. Gambling on muay Thai boxing is estimated to worth about 40 billion baht a year...all the talk about the promotion of Thai martial arts is just baloney." Rob Cox, the manager of a boxing camp just east of Bangkok claims that "Without the gamblers, the sport would pretty much be dead. They're killing it off, but they’re also keeping it alive".


title: Muay Thai

text: The practice of fixing fights is not unknown. Boxers can earn from 60,000 to 150,000 baht for purposefully losing a fight. A fighter, later arrested, who threw a fight at Rajadamnern Stadium in December 2019, is an example. An infamous alleged case of match-fixing was the bout on 12 October 2014 in Pattaya between top Thai boxer Buakaw Banchamek and his challenger, Enriko Kehl, at the K-1 World Max Final event.


title: Muay Thai

text: An urban legend started being told by Thai people in 1767 around the time of the fall of the ancient Siamese capital of Ayutthaya, when the invading Burmese troops rounded up thousands of Siamese citizens. They then organised a seven-day, seven-night religious festival in honour of Buddha's relics. The festivities included many forms of entertainment, such as costume plays, comedies and sword fighting matches. According to the folklore story, at one point, King Mangra wanted to see how Thai fighters would compare to his fighters. Nai Khanomtom was selected to fight against the King's chosen champion and the boxing ring was set up in front of the throne. When the fight began, Nai Khanomtom charged out, using punches, kicks, elbows and knees to pummel his opponent until he collapsed. The King supposedly asked if Nai Khanomtom would fight nine other Burmese champions to prove himself. He agreed and fought one after the other with no rest periods. His last opponent was a great kickboxing teacher from Rakhine State whom Nai Khanomtom defeated with kicks.


title: Muay Thai

text: King Mangra was so impressed that he allegedly remarked, "Every part of the Siamese is blessed with venom. Even with his bare hands, he can fell nine or ten opponents. But his Lord was incompetent and lost the country to the enemy. If he had been any good, there was no way the City of Ayutthaya would ever have fallen."


title: Muay Thai

text: To commemorate the story of Nai Khanom Tom, the Muay Thai Festival and Wai Khru Muay Thai Ceremony are staged annually every year on March 17.


title: Muay Thai

text: Like most full contact fighting sports, muay Thai has a heavy focus on body conditioning. This can create a steep learning curve for newcomers to muay Thai but allows for rapid increases in fitness and stamina provided one avoids overtraining. Training regimens include many staples of combat sport conditioning such as running, shadowboxing, rope jumping, body weight resistance exercises, medicine ball exercises, abdominal exercises and, in some cases, weight training. Thai boxers rely heavily on kicks utilising the shin bone. As such, practitioners will repeatedly hit a dense heavy bag with their shins, conditioning it, hardening the bone through a process called cortical remodelling. Striking a sand-filled bag will have the same effect.


title: Muay Thai

text: Training specific to a Thai fighter includes training with coaches on Thai pads, focus mitts, heavy bag, and sparring. Daily training includes many rounds (3–5 minute periods broken up by a short rest, often 1–2 minutes) of these various methods of practice. Thai pad training is a cornerstone of muay Thai conditioning that involves practicing punches, kicks, knees, and elbow strikes with a trainer wearing thick pads covering the forearms and hands. These special pads (often referred to as Thai pads) are used to absorb the impact of the fighter's strikes and allow the fighter to react to the attacks of the pad holder in a live situation. The trainer will often also wear a belly pad around the abdominal area so that the fighter can attack with straight kicks or knees to the body at any time during the round.


title: Muay Thai

text: Focus mitts are specific to training a fighter's hand speed, punch combinations, timing, punching power, defence and counter-punching and may also be used to practice elbow strikes. Heavy bag training is a conditioning and power exercise that reinforces the techniques practiced on the pads. Sparring is a means to test technique, skills, range, strategy and timing against a partner. Sparring is often a light to medium contact exercise because competitive fighters on a full schedule are not advised to risk injury by sparring hard. Specific tactics and strategies can be trained with sparring including in close fighting, clinching and kneeing only, cutting off the ring, or using reach and distance to keep an aggressive fighter away.


title: Muay Thai

text: Due to the rigorous training regimen (some Thai boxers fight almost every other week), professional boxers in Thailand have relatively short careers in the ring. Many retire from competition to begin instructing the next generation of Thai fighters. Most professional Thai boxers come from lower economic backgrounds, and the purse (after other parties have their cut) is sought as a means of support for the fighters and their families. Very few higher economic strata Thais join the professional muay Thai ranks; they usually either do not practice the sport or practice it only as amateur boxers.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist. He came to prominence in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the antiracist, anticlassist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots (which organized poor whites), and the Young Lords (which organized Hispanics), and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. A Marxist–Leninist, Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying, "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all.”


title: Fred Hampton

text: In 1967, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified Hampton as a radical threat. It tried to subvert his activities in Chicago, sowing disinformation among black progressive groups and placing a counterintelligence operative in the local Panthers organization. In December 1969, Hampton was drugged, shot and killed in his bed during a predawn raid at his Chicago apartment by a tactical unit of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, who received aid from the Chicago Police Department and the FBI leading up to the attack. Law enforcement sprayed more than 90 gunshots throughout the apartment; the occupants fired once. During the raid, Panther Mark Clark was also killed and several others were seriously wounded. In January 1970, the Cook County Coroner held an inquest; the jury concluded that Hampton's and Clark's deaths were justifiable homicides.


title: Fred Hampton

text: A civil lawsuit was later filed on behalf of the survivors and the relatives of Hampton and Clark. It was resolved in 1982 by a settlement of $1.85 million (equivalent to $ million in ); the U.S. federal government, Cook County, and the City of Chicago, each paid one-third to a group of nine plaintiffs. Given revelations about the illegal COINTELPRO program and documents associated with the killings, many scholars now consider Hampton's death an assassination at the FBI's initiative.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Hampton was born on August 30, 1948, in present-day Summit Argo, Illinois (generally shortened to Summit), and moved with his parents to another Chicago suburb, Maywood, at age 10. His parents had come from Louisiana as part of the Great Migration of African Americans in the early 20th century out of the South. They both worked at the Argo Starch Company, a corn starch processor. As a youth, Hampton was gifted both in the classroom and athletically, and hoped to play center field for the New York Yankees. Fred couldn't accept injustice anywhere. At 10 years old, he started hosting weekend breakfasts for other children from the neighborhood, cooking the meals himself in what could be described as a precursor to the Panthers’ free breakfast program. In high school, he led walkouts protesting black students' exclusion from the competition for homecoming queen and calling on officials to hire more black teachers and administrators. Hampton graduated from Proviso East High School with honors and varsity letters, and a Junior Achievement Award, in 1966. He enrolled at Triton Junior College in nearby River Grove, Illinois, where he majored in pre-law. He planned to become more familiar with the legal system to use it as a defense against police. When he and fellow Black Panthers later followed police in his community supervision program, watching out for police brutality, they used his knowledge of the law as a defense.


title: Fred Hampton

text: In 1966, Fred Hampton turned 18. At that time, he started identifying with the Third World socialist struggles, as well as reading communist revolutionaries Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong. Shortly after, Hampton urged not only peace in the Vietnam War, but also North Vietnam's victory.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Hampton became active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and assumed leadership of its West Suburban Branch's Youth Council. In his capacity as an NAACP youth organizer, he demonstrated natural leadership abilities: from a community of 27,000, he was able to muster a youth group of 500 members strong. He worked to get more and better recreational facilities established in the neighborhoods and to improve educational resources for Maywood's impoverished black community.


title: Fred Hampton

text: At about the same time that Hampton was successfully organizing young African Americans for the NAACP, the Black Panther Party (BPP) was rising to national prominence. Hampton was quickly attracted to the Black Panthers' approach, which was based on a Ten-Point Program that integrated black self-determination with class and economic critique from Maoism. He joined the party and relocated to downtown Chicago. In November 1968, he joined the party's nascent Illinois chapter, founded in late 1967 by Bob Brown, a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizer.


title: Fred Hampton

text: In 1968, Hampton was accused of assaulting an ice cream truck driver, stealing $71 worth of ice cream bars, and giving them to kids in the street. He was convicted in May 1969 and sentenced to two to five years in prison. Writer Frank B. Wilderson III places this incident within the framework of COINTELPRO efforts to disrupt the Black Panthers of Chicago, in this case by "leveling [...] trumped-up charges".


title: Fred Hampton

text: In 1969, Hampton, now deputy chairman of the BPP Illinois chapter, conducted a meeting condemning sexism. After 1969, the party considered sexism counter-revolutionary. In 1970, about 40–70% of party members were women.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Over the next year, Hampton and his friends and associates achieved many successes in Chicago. Perhaps the most important was a nonaggression pact among Chicago's most powerful street gangs. Emphasizing that racial and ethnic conflict among gangs would only keep its members entrenched in poverty, Hampton strove to forge an anti-racist, class-conscious, multiracial alliance among the BPP, the Young Patriots Organization, and the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez, leading to the Rainbow Coalition.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Hampton met the Young Lords in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood the day after they were in the news for occupying a police community workshop at the Chicago 18th District Police Station. He was arrested twice with Jimenez at the Wicker Park Welfare Office, and both were charged with "mob action" at a peaceful picket of the office. Later, the Rainbow Coalition was joined nationwide by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Brown Berets, AIM, and the Red Guard Party. In May 1969, Hampton called a press conference to announce that the coalition had formed. What the coalition groups would do was based on common action. Some of their joint issues were poverty, anti-racism, corruption, police brutality, and substandard housing. If there was a protest or a demonstration, the groups would attend the event and support each other.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Jeffrey Haas, who was Hampton's lawyer, has praised some of Hampton's politics and his success in unifying movements. But Haas criticizes the way Hampton and the BPP organized in a pyramidal/vertical structure, contrasting this with the horizontal structure of Black Lives Matter: "They may also have picked up on the vulnerability of a hierarchical movement where you have one leader, which makes the movement very vulnerable if that leader is imprisoned, killed, or otherwise compromised. I think the fact that Black Lives Matter says 'We're leaderfull, not leaderless' perhaps makes them less vulnerable to this kind of government assault."


title: Fred Hampton

text: Hampton rose quickly in the Black Panthers based on his organizing skills, oratorical gifts, and charisma. Once he became leader of the Chicago chapter, he organized weekly rallies, participated in strikes, worked closely with the BPP's local People's Clinic, taught political education classes every morning at 6 am, and launched a project for community supervision of the police. Hampton was also instrumental in the BPP's Free Breakfast Program. When Bob Brown left the party with Kwame Ture, in the FBI-fomented SNCC/Panther split, Hampton assumed chairmanship of the Illinois state BPP. This automatically made him a national BPP deputy chairman. As the FBI's COINTELPRO began to decimate the nationwide Panther leadership, Hampton's prominence in the national hierarchy increased rapidly and dramatically. Eventually, he was in line to be appointed to the party's Central Committee Chief of Staff. He would have achieved this position had he not been killed on December 4, 1969.


title: Fred Hampton

text: The FBI believed that Hampton's leadership and talent for communication made him a major threat among Black Panther leaders. It began keeping close tabs on his activities. Investigations have shown that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black movement in the United States. Hoover believed the Panthers, Young Patriots, Young Lords, and similar radical coalitions that Hampton forged in Chicago were a stepping stone to the rise of a revolution that could cause a radical change in the U.S. government.


title: Fred Hampton

text: The FBI opened a file on Hampton in 1967. It tapped Hampton's mother's phone in February 1968 and by May placed Hampton on the bureau's "Agitator Index" as a "key militant leader". In late 1968, the Racial Matters squad of the FBI's Chicago field office recruited William O'Neal to work with it; he had recently been arrested twice for interstate car theft and impersonating a federal officer. In exchange for having his felony charges dropped and receiving a monthly stipend, O'Neal agreed to infiltrate the BPP as a counterintelligence operative.


title: Fred Hampton

text: O'Neal joined the party and quickly rose in the organization, becoming Director of Chapter Security and Hampton's bodyguard. In 1969, the FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) in San Francisco wrote Hoover that the agent's investigation had found that, in his city at least, the Panthers were primarily feeding breakfast to children. Hoover responded with a memo implying that the agent's career prospects depended on his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".


title: Fred Hampton

text: Using anonymous letters, the FBI sowed distrust and eventually instigated a split between the Panthers and the Blackstone Rangers. O'Neal instigated an armed clash between them on April 2, 1969. The Panthers became effectively isolated from their power base in the Chicago ghetto, so the FBI worked to undermine its ties with other radical organizations. O'Neal was instructed to "create a rift" between the party and Students for a Democratic Society, whose Chicago headquarters was near that of the Panthers.


title: Fred Hampton

text: The FBI released a batch of racist cartoons in the Panthers' name, aimed at alienating white activists. It also launched a disinformation program to forestall the formation of the Rainbow Coalition, but the BPP did make an alliance with the Young Patriots and Young Lords. In repeated directives, Hoover demanded that COINTELPRO personnel investigate the Rainbow Coalition, "destroy what the [BPP] stands for", and "eradicate its 'serve the people' programs".


title: Fred Hampton

text: Documents secured by Senate investigators in the early 1970s revealed that the FBI actively encouraged violence between the Panthers and other radical groups; this provoked multiple murders in cities throughout the country. On July 16, 1969, an armed confrontation between party members and the Chicago Police Department resulted in one BPP member being mortally wounded and six others arrested on serious charges.


title: Fred Hampton

text: In early October, Hampton and his girlfriend Deborah Johnson (now known as Akua Njeri), who was pregnant with their child (Fred Hampton Jr.), rented a four-and-a-half-room apartment at 2337 West Monroe Street to be closer to BPP headquarters. O'Neal reported to his superiors that much of the Panthers' "provocative" arms stockpile was stored there. He drew them a map of the apartment. In early November, Hampton traveled to California on a speaking engagement with the UCLA Law Students Association. He met with the remaining BPP national hierarchy, who appointed him to the party's central committee. He was soon to take the position of chief of staff and major spokesman.


title: Fred Hampton

text: On the night of November 13, 1969, while Hampton was in California, Chicago police officers John J. Gilhooly and Frank G. Rappaport were killed in a gun battle with Panthers; one died the next day. A total of nine police officers were shot. Spurgeon Winter Jr, a 19-year-old Panther, was killed by police. Another Panther, Lawrence S. Bell, was charged with murder. In an unsigned editorial headlined "No Quarter for Wild Beasts", the "Chicago Tribune" urged that Chicago police officers approaching suspected Panthers "should be ordered to be ready to shoot."


title: Fred Hampton

text: As part of the larger COINTELPRO operation, the FBI was determined to prevent any improvement in the effectiveness of the BPP leadership. The FBI orchestrated an armed raid with the Chicago police and Cook County State's Attorney on Hampton's Chicago apartment. They had obtained detailed information about the apartment, including a layout of furniture, from O'Neal. An augmented, 14-man team of the SAO (state Special Prosecutions Unit) was organized for a predawn raid; they were armed with a search warrant for illegal weapons.


title: Fred Hampton

text: On the evening of December 3, Hampton taught a political education course at a local church, which was attended by most Panther members. Afterward, as was typical, he was accompanied to his Monroe Street apartment by Johnson and several Panthers: Blair Anderson, James Grady, Ronald "Doc" Satchell, Harold Bell, Verlina Brewer, Louis Truelock, Brenda Harris and Mark Clark. O'Neal was already there, having prepared a late dinner, which the group ate around midnight. O'Neal had slipped the secobarbital into a drink that Hampton consumed during the dinner to sedate Hampton so he would not awaken during the subsequent raid. O'Neal left after dinner. At about 1:30 am, December 4, Hampton fell asleep mid-sentence while talking to his mother on the telephone.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Although Hampton was not known to take drugs, Cook County chemist Eleanor Berman later reported that she had run two tests, each showing evidence of barbiturates in Hampton's blood. An FBI chemist failed to find similar traces, but Berman stood by her findings.


title: Fred Hampton

text: The office of Cook County State's Attorney Edward Hanrahan organized the raid, using officers attached to his office. Hampton had recently strongly criticized Hanrahan, saying that Hanrahan's talk about a "war on gangs" was really rhetoric used to enable him to carry out a "war on black youth".


title: Fred Hampton

text: At 4 am, the heavily armed police team arrived at the site, divided into two teams, eight for the front of the building and six for the rear. At 4:45 am, they stormed the apartment. Mark Clark, sitting in the front room of the apartment with a shotgun in his lap, was on security duty. The police shot him in the chest, killing him instantly. An alternative account said that Clark answered the door and police immediately shot him. Either way, Clark's gun discharged once into the ceiling. This single round was fired when he suffered a reflexive death-convulsion after being shot. This was the only shot fired by the Panthers.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Hampton, drugged by barbiturates, was sleeping on a mattress in the bedroom with Johnson, who was nine months pregnant with their child. Police officers removed her from the room while Hampton lay unconscious in bed. Then the raiding team fired at the head of the south bedroom. Hampton was wounded in the shoulder by the shooting. According to the National Archives and Records Administration, "upon that discovery, an officer shot him twice in his head and killed him".


title: Fred Hampton

text: The injured Panthers said they heard two shots. According to Hampton's supporters, the shots were fired point-blank at Hampton's head. According to Johnson, an officer then said: "He's good and dead now."


title: Fred Hampton

text: Hampton's body was dragged into the bedroom doorway and left in a pool of blood. The officers directed their gunfire at the remaining Panthers who had been sleeping in the north bedroom (Satchel, Anderson, Brewer, and Harris). Brewer, Satchel, Anderson, and Harris were seriously wounded, then beaten and dragged into the street. They were arrested on charges of aggravated assault and attempted murder of the officers. They were each held on $100,000 bail.


title: Fred Hampton

text: In the early 1990s, Jose "Cha Cha" Jimenez, a former president and co-founder of the Young Lords who had developed close ties to Hampton and the Chicago Black Panther Party during the late 1960s, interviewed Johnson about the raid. She said:


title: Fred Hampton

text: The seven Panthers who survived the raid were indicted by a grand jury on charges of attempted murder, armed violence, and other weapons charges. These charges were subsequently dropped. During the trial, the Chicago Police Department claimed that the Panthers were the first to fire shots. But a later investigation found that the Chicago police fired between 90 and 99 shots, while the only Panthers shot was from Clark's dropped shotgun.


title: Fred Hampton

text: After the raid, the apartment was left unguarded. The Panthers sent some members to investigate, accompanied by videographer Mike Gray and stills photographer Norris McNamara to document the scene. This footage was instrumental in proving the raid was an assassination. The footage was later released as part of the 1971 documentary "The Murder of Fred Hampton". After a break-in at an FBI office in Pennsylvania, the existence of COINTELPRO, an illegal counter-intelligence program, was revealed and reported. With this program revealed, many activists and others began to suspect that the police raid and Hampton's killing were conducted under this program. One of the documents released after the break-in was a floor plan of Hampton's apartment. Another document outlined a deal that the FBI brokered with US deputy attorney general Richard Kleindienst to conceal the FBI's role in Hampton's death and the existence of COINTELPRO.


title: Fred Hampton

text: At a press conference the next day, the police announced the arrest team had been attacked by the "violent" and "extremely vicious" Panthers and defended themselves accordingly. In a second press conference on December 8, the police leadership praised the assault team for their "remarkable restraint", "bravery", and "professional discipline" in not killing all the Panthers present. Photographic evidence was presented of "bullet holes" allegedly made by shots fired by the Panthers, but reporters soon challenged this claim. An internal investigation was undertaken, and the police claimed that their colleagues on the assault team were exonerated of any wrongdoing, concluding that they "used lawful means to overcome the assault".


title: Fred Hampton

text: Five thousand people attended Hampton's funeral. He was eulogized by black leaders, including Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr.'s successor as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In his eulogy, Jackson said that "when Fred was shot in Chicago, black people in particular, and decent people in general, bled everywhere." On December 6, members of the Weather Underground destroyed numerous police vehicles in a retaliatory bombing spree at 3600 N. Halsted Street, Chicago.


title: Fred Hampton

text: The police called their raid on Hampton's apartment a "shootout". The Black Panthers called it a "shoot-in", because so many shots were fired by police.


title: Fred Hampton

text: On December 11 and 12, the two competing daily newspapers, the "Chicago Tribune" and the "Chicago Sun-Times", published vivid accounts of the events but drew different conclusions. The "Tribune" has long been considered the politically conservative newspaper, and the "Sun-Times" the liberal paper. On December 11, the "Tribune" published a page 1 article titled, "Exclusive – Hanrahan, Police Tell Panther Story." The article included photographs supplied by Hanrahan's office that depicted bullet holes in a thin white curtain and door jamb as evidence that the Panthers fired multiple bullets at the police.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Jack Challem, editor of the "Wright College News", the student newspaper at Wright Junior College in Chicago, had visited the apartment on December 6, when it was still unsecured. He took numerous photographs of the crime scenes. A member of the Black Panthers was allowing visitors to tour the apartment. Challem's photographs did not show the bullet holes reported by the "Tribune". On the morning of December 12, after the "Tribune" article had appeared with the Hanrahan-supplied photos, Challem contacted a reporter at the "Sun-Times", showed him his own photographs, and encouraged the other reporter to visit the apartment. That evening, the "Sun-Times" published a page 1 article with the headline: "Those 'bullet holes' aren't." According to the article, the alleged bullet holes (supposedly the result of the Panthers shooting in the direction of the police) were nail heads.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Four weeks after witnessing Hampton's death at the hands of the police, Johnson gave birth to their son, Fred Hampton Jr.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Civil rights activists Roy Wilkins and Ramsey Clark (styled as "The Commission of Inquiry into the Black Panthers and the Police") subsequently alleged that the Chicago police had killed Hampton without justification or provocation and had violated the Panthers' constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure. "The Commission" further alleged that the Chicago Police Department had imposed a summary punishment on the Panthers.


title: Fred Hampton

text: A federal grand jury did not return any indictment against any of the individuals involved with the planning or execution of the raid, including the officers involved in killing Hampton. O'Neal, who had given the FBI the floor plan of the apartment and drugged Hampton, later admitted his involvement in setting up the raid. He committed suicide on January 15, 1990.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Shortly after the raid, Cook County Coroner Andrew Toman began forming a special six-member coroner's jury to hold an inquest into the deaths of Hampton and Clark. On December 23, Toman announced four additions to the jury, who included two African-American men: physician Theodore K. Lawless and attorney Julian B. Wilkins, the son of J. Ernest Wilkins Sr. He said the four were selected from a group of candidates submitted to his office by groups and individuals representing both Chicago's black and white communities. Civil rights leaders and spokesmen for the black community were reportedly disappointed with the selection.


title: Fred Hampton

text: An official with the Chicago Urban League said, "I would have had more confidence in the jury if one of them had been a black man who has a rapport with the young and the grass roots in the community." Gus Savage said that such a man to whom the community could relate need not be black. The jury eventually included a third black man, who had been a member of the first coroner's jury sworn in on December 4.


title: Fred Hampton

text: The blue-ribbon panel convened for the inquest on January 6, 1970. On January 21, they ruled the deaths of Hampton and Clark to be justifiable homicides. The jury qualified their verdict on Hampton's death as "based solely and exclusively on the evidence presented to this inquisition"; police and expert witnesses provided the only testimony during the inquest.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Jury foreman James T. Hicks stated that they could not consider the charges made by surviving Black Panthers who had been in the apartment; they had told reporters that the police had entered the apartment shooting. The survivors were reported to have refused to testify during the inquest because they faced criminal charges of attempted murder and aggravated assault during the raid. Attorneys for the Hampton and Clark families did not introduce any witnesses during the proceedings but called the inquest "a well-rehearsed theatrical performance designed to vindicate the police officers". Hanrahan said the verdict was recognition "of the truthfulness of our police officers' account of the events".


title: Fred Hampton

text: Released on May 15, 1970, the reports of a federal grand jury criticized the actions of the police, the surviving Black Panthers, and the Chicago news media. The grand jury called the police department's raid "ill conceived" and said many errors were committed during the post-raid investigation and reconstruction of the events. It said that the surviving Black Panthers' refusal to cooperate hampered the investigation, and that the press "improperly and grossly exaggerated stories".


title: Fred Hampton

text: In 1970, the survivors and relatives of Hampton and Clark filed a civil suit, stating that the civil rights of the Black Panther members were violated by the joint police/FBI raid and seeking $47.7 million in damages. Twenty-eight defendants were named, including Hanrahan as well as the City of Chicago, Cook County, and federal governments. It took years for the case to get to trial, which lasted 18 months. It was reported to have been the longest federal trial up to that time. After its conclusion in 1977, Judge Joseph Sam Perry of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed the suit against 21 of the defendants before jury deliberations. After jurors deadlocked on a verdict, Perry dismissed the suit against the remaining defendants.


title: Fred Hampton

text: The plaintiffs appealed. In 1979, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago found that the government had withheld relevant documents, thereby obstructing the judicial process. Reinstating the case against 24 of the defendants, the Court of Appeals ordered a new trial. The Supreme Court of the United States heard an appeal by defendants but voted 5–3 in 1980 to remand the case to the District Court for a new trial.


title: Fred Hampton

text: In 1982, the City of Chicago, Cook County, and the federal government agreed to a settlement in which each would pay $616,333 (equivalent to $ million per payee in ) to a group of nine plaintiffs, including the mothers of Hampton and Clark. The $1.85 million settlement (equivalent to $ million in ) was believed to be the largest ever in a civil rights case. G. Flint Taylor, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said, "The settlement is an admission of the conspiracy that existed between the FBI and Hanrahan's men to murder Fred Hampton." Assistant United States Attorney Robert Gruenberg said the settlement was intended to avoid another costly trial and was not an admission of guilt or responsibility by any of the defendants.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Ten days afterward, Bobby Rush, the then deputy minister of defense for the Illinois Black Panther Party, called the raiding party an "execution squad". As is typical in settlements, the three government defendants did not acknowledge claims of responsibility for plaintiffs' allegations.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Michael Newton is among the writers who have concluded that Hampton was assassinated. In his 2016 book "Unsolved Civil Rights Murder Cases, 1934–1970", Newton writes that Hampton "was murdered in his sleep by Chicago police with FBI collusion." This view is also presented in Jakobi Williams's book "From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago".


title: Fred Hampton

text: Hampton was very close with Chicago Black Catholic priest George Clements, who served as his mentor and as a chaplain for the local Panther outfit. Hampton and the Panthers also used Clements's parish, Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chicago, as a refuge in times of particular surveillance or pursuit from the police. They also provided security for several of Clements's "Black Unity Masses", part of his revolutionary activities during the Black Catholic Movement. Clements spoke at Hampton's funeral, and also said a Requiem Mass for him at Holy Angels.


title: Fred Hampton

text: According to a 1969 "Chicago Tribune" report, "The raid ended the promising political career of Cook County State's Atty. Edward V. Hanrahan, who was indicted but cleared with 13 other law-enforcement agents on charges of obstructing justice. Bernard Carey, a Republican, defeated him in the next election, in part because of the support of outraged black voters." The families of Hampton and Clark filed a $47.7 million civil suit against the city, state, and federal governments. The case went to trial before Federal Judge J. Sam Perry. After more than 18 months of testimony and at the close of the plaintiff's case, Perry dismissed the case. The plaintiffs appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit reversed, ordering the case to be retried. More than a decade after the case had been filed, the suit was finally settled for $1.85 million. The two families each shared in the settlement.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Jeffrey Haas, with his law partners G. Flint Taylor and Dennis Cunningham and attorney James D. Montgomery, were the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the federal suit "Hampton v. Hanrahan", conducted additional research and wrote a book about these events. It was published in 2009. He said that Chicago was worse off without Hampton:


title: Fred Hampton

text: In 1990, the Chicago City Council unanimously passed a resolution, introduced by then-Alderman Madeline Haithcock, commemorating December 4, 2004, as Fred Hampton Day in Chicago. The resolution read in part:


title: Fred Hampton

text: "Fred Hampton, who was only 21 years old, made his mark in Chicago history not so much by his death as by the heroic efforts of his life and by his goals of empowering the most oppressed sector of Chicago's Black community, bringing people into political life through participation in their own freedom fighting organization."


title: Fred Hampton

text: In March 2006, supporters of Hampton's charity work proposed the naming of a Chicago street in his honor. Chicago's chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police opposed this effort.


title: Fred Hampton

text: Two days after the killings of Hampton and Clark, on December 6, 1969, members of the Weathermen destroyed numerous police vehicles in a retaliatory bombing spree at 3600 N. Halsted Street in Chicago. After that, the group became more radical. On May 21, 1970, the group issued a "Declaration of War" against the U.S. government and, for the first time, used its new name, the "Weather Underground Organization". They adopted fake identities and decided to pursue covert activities only. These initially included preparations to bomb a U.S. military non-commissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in what Brian Flanagan later said was intended to be "the most horrific hit the United States government had ever suffered on its territory"."We've known that our job is to lead white kids into armed revolution... Kids know the lines are drawn: revolution is touching all of our lives. Tens of thousands have learned that protest and marches don't do it. Revolutionary violence is the only way."