The Sports Affairs Council (SAC) yesterday rejected media reports that it had tried to block the display of the Republic of China flag at this week’s LPGA golf tournament, which is being held in Taoyuan County.
Sports Affairs Council Minister Tai Hsia-ling (戴遐齡) said her council had always firmly supported raising the national flag at the event and that a formal decision on the issue was reached at a meeting held on April 27.
“Without the national flag, it would be meaningless to hold the tournament in Taiwan,” Tai said.
She disclosed that there was also a plan to give away 20,000 national flags at the venue.
Tai was responding to a story in the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper), which said the council and the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee (CTOC) had asked organizers not to fly the national flag and to display the Chinese Taipei Olympic flag instead to avoid upsetting Beijing.
The report cited Hsu Tien-ya (許典雅), president of the Sunrise Group, which is hosting the tournament.
According to Hsu, LPGA representatives and management group IMG had requested in a draft contract that Taiwan’s Olympic flag be flown, a condition Hsu said he rejected.
Hsu said the SAC and the CTOC had then raised the issue at a subsequent meeting about the tournament, but he again held firm.
Tai yesterday dismissed the report as “inconceivable” and reiterated the council’s position that “sports and politics should be kept separate.”
The four-round tournament, the first LPGA event ever to be held in Taiwan, begins today at the Sunrise Golf and Country Club in Yangmei City (楊梅), Taoyuan County.
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