The nation should change the name of its national team to “Taiwan” to correct a historical mistake, veteran Taiwanese independence activist Chen Yung-hsing (陳永興) said yesterday during a televised debate on Saturday’s referendums.
Chen, a former superintendent of St Mary’s Hospital in Yilan County’s Luodong Township (羅東) and founder of the online media outlet Taiwan People News, criticized the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee’s opposition to the name-change referendum.
He also criticized its failure to join the debate to explain its position.
Photo: Hua Meng-ching, Taipei Times
The committee has said that it would be unacceptable for the national team not to use the name “Chinese Taipei” and has tried to scare athletes from supporting the referendum, he said.
The referendum was initiated by National Policy Adviser to the President Chi Cheng (紀政), a three-time Olympian and winner of the bronze medal in the women’s 80m hurdles in 1968.
“Would it be embarrassing for the national team to use the name ‘Taiwan’ in competitions?” Chen said. “Whose orders are you following? Are you listening to China?”
An agreement signed in 1981 by the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland, requiring that Taiwan use the name “Chinese Taipei” in the Olympics was humiliating and akin to forfeiting sovereignty, he said.
It was acceptable in the past for the team to use the name “Taiwan,” as it did in the 1960 Rome Olympics, 1964 Tokyo Games and 1968 Mexico City Games, he said.
Taiwan boycotted the 1976 Montreal Olympics after the team was prohibited from using any reference to the Republic of China at the Games due to Canada’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had voted 58-2 to allow Taiwan to participate under the name “Team Taiwan,” but Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) objected to the name and recalled the team.
Chiang’s abstinence and refusal to concede to China was the source of the national team’s problems that continue today, Chen said.
More than 10 nations have changed the names of their teams, he said, such as the change from the Soviet Union to Russia.
The use of the name “Chinese Taipei” was agreed to by Taiwan under a dictatorship that no longer exists, Chen said, adding that the team’s name should be changed to achieve transitional justice.
“Taiwan has never been governed by China, why would we not use our own name, ‘Taiwan,’” for the national team, Chen said.
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
RSS