Taiwan yesterday condemned Russia after its UN envoy brought up an Olympic boxing row focused on the gender of two female competitors, including Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) of Taiwan.
In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) condemned the remarks made by Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy during a meeting of the body focused on women, peace and security on Wednesday.
Polyanskiy accused Western nations of monopolizing the Olympics and “aggressively” imposing an LGBT agenda on the rest of the world, a Reuters report said.
Photo: CNA
“At the Olympic Games in Paris, female boxers are being publicly subjected to violence [by] athletes who had previously failed hormonal tests done by the International Boxing Federation [IBA] and, according to the Federation and according to common sense, are men,” Polyanskiy was quoted as saying in the report.
Lin’s eligibility in the Olympics has been confirmed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the ministry said, adding that the IBA has lost its credibility on the international stage.
It is the second consecutive Olympics in which the IBA has not managed the boxing events. The IOC suspended the association in 2019 and revoked its recognition last year due to corruption scandals and financial mismanagement.
Polyanskiy arbitrarily cited false accusations made by the IBA without verification and abused the UN Security Council venue to present falsehoods that have nothing to do with maintaining international peace and security, MOFA said.
This fully demonstrates Russia’s disregard for international rules and justice while intentionally using its political influence to affect Olympic events, it said.
The ministry also called on the international community to unite in jointly safeguarding the Olympic spirit of “friendship, unity and fair competition.”
President William Lai (賴清德) and Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) have publicly expressed their support for the Taiwanese boxer.
Lin and Algerian boxer Imane Khelif have been subjected to abuse on social media and inaccurate online speculation about their gender, including from J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series.
The IBA and its president, Umar Kremlev from Russia, have continued to make allegations about the gender of the two boxers after disqualifying them from the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships last year over opaque eligibility tests.
The IOC has called these attacks “dangerous, misogynistic and baseless.”
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
RSS