With protest banners and small flags in hand, over 600 members of the Taiwan chapter of Lions Clubs International (LCI) yesterday chanted "Taiwan-Yes, China Taiwan-No" during a parade at the organization's annual international convention in Japan.
The group was protesting a decision reached by LCI headquarters in April to change the chapter's membership name from "ROC Lions Club" to "China Taiwan Lions Club," without the chapter's consent.
Although a temporary solution was reached in which the Taiwan chapter would be addressed as "MD300" -- the chapter's district number -- prior to this week's convention, the chapter nonetheless decided to proceed with its plan to express its discontent.
"Judging from the fact that our parade team was one of the largest and that all of us shouted protest slogans with all of our might, we think we've successfully made our stand known," Danny Hsu (徐明德), former chairman of the Taiwan LCI chapter, said yesterday.
Yesterday's parade was held at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka. According to Hsu, the Taiwan chapter's protest yesterday was the first time in LCI's 85 year history that such a parade-protest had taken place. The parade is an annual event at the organization's international convention.
According to Hsu, LCI had originally placed the Taiwan chapter's parade position under "C." However, in an apparent bow to its Taiwan members, LCI changed their position to the "T" section.
"We were informed at the last minute that our parade position had been reassigned to `T,'" said Hsu.
"Although we don't know the reason for the change, it was okay with us, since that meant that our chapter wouldn't been mixed up with the China chapters by having us follow the China Shenzhen chapter."
In May, the first two chapters in China, in Guangdong and Shenzhen, were added to LCI's more than 44,600 clubs in 189 countries and were named "China Guangdong" and "China Shenzhen." In addition, the membership names of the Hong Kong and Macao clubs were changed to "China Hong Kong" and "China Macao."
"Due to some last-minute confusion, however, we ended up having two parade teams -- one in the `C' section and another in the `T' section."
In other words, Hsu said, the Taiwan chapter ended up protesting twice during the organization's three-hour parade.
"And that was fortunate," Hsu added, "Because we noticed that by the time the parade teams in the later part of the alphabet passed, the high-ranking LCI officials had left the viewing stand."
Hsu said the chapter would carry out another five-minute protest at today's convention opening.
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