More lawmakers came out yesterday to condemn the botched visit on June 24 by the Senegal soccer team and demanded that the nation's top sports official step down to shoulder the blame for the incident.
"The entire incident showed that officials involved in organizing the visit are inexperienced and tactless," said PFP lawmaker Cheng Chih-lung (
On June 24, of thousands of soccer fans packed a stadium in downtown Taipei where the Senegal soccer team, according to diplomatic and athletic officials, was to play an exhibition game.
But after about 30 minutes of dribbling, shooting at the goal, receiving flowers and handing out autographs, the Senegal players -- who stunned defending champions France 1-0 in the World Cup's opening match - -- left the pitch without playing a game.
Cheng, a former national basketball player, said the organizers had been wrong to leave out the chief Senegal soccer coach when planning their trip to Taiwan.
"Based on my own experience, it is the chief coach who is in charge of the players' overall management when they are abroad," the freshman lawmaker said. "Any agreement with lower-ranking coaches would not count."
Echoing his KMT colleagues, Cheng suggested that Lin Te-fu (
Lin's council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs jointly planned the team's 30-hour visit.
Several officials at the ministry, including spokeswoman Katherine Chang (
However, Liu Wen-hsiung (
"I challenge those who pull the strings behind the scenes to tender their resignations in order to set a good example," Liu said.
Premier Yu Shyi-kun has instructed the two agencies to look into the matter and take the relevant measures against officials responsible for the mishandling of the event.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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