The nation's membership in the International Olympics Commit-tee (IOC) will not be revoked as a result of rejected the route for the Olympic torch relay, the chairman of the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports said yesterday.
Taiwan's athletes would participate in the Beijing Olympics "as long as damage to the nation's sovereignty is avoided," Jongher Yang (
Yang made the comments as he fielded questions from angry legislators during a meeting of the legislature's Education and Culture Committee about the spurning of Beijing's torch relay plan.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) made the decision to reject the relay, even though the sports council was the one that made the announcement, Yang said.
The sports council rejected the torch relay during a televised press conference last Thursday night, two hours after Beijing had announced that Taiwan would be included in the relay route.
"The decision was made in a meeting in which the Mainland Affairs Council raised objections to the route because it belittled our sovereignty," he said, refusing to say exactly who had raised the objections.
Several Cabinet agencies, including the MAC, the sports council and the Government Information Office, said Beijing had violated a deal with Taiwan about the relay by referring to the country as "Taipei, China" instead of by its IOC title -- "Chinese Taipei."
However, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Diane Lee (李慶安) said that China had never used the title "Taipei, China" in any official documents related to the Beijing Olympics.
She said the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee had signed an agreement with Beijing on the torch route after getting permission from the Cabinet to do so.
"What's the real reason behind your agreeing to the route with Beijing and then reneging on it?" Lee asked Yang, who told her that "Taipei, China" is used on China's Olympic committee Web site.
Meanwhile, KMT Legislator Huang Chih-hsiung (黃志雄) -- an Olympic silver medalist in taekwondo -- yesterday launched an online signature campaign to urge the government to change its stance on the torch relay.
"Instead of worrying that Taiwan's sovereignty will be degraded by the route, why not let people line the streets to welcome the Olympic torch to demonstrate Taiwan's identity?" Huang said.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiu-chuan
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS