Taiwan will not send a team to next year’s Gay Games in Hong Kong because of fears that their athletes and staff could be arrested if they wave the nation’s flag or use its name, the Taiwan Gay Sports and Movement Association said.
“We have decided not to send a national delegation, as we don’t expect to be able join as Taiwan and to ensure personal safety of the athletes,” association president Yang Chih-chun (楊智鈞) said.
Yang said that the association, which is a member of the Federation of Gay Games, would assist any Taiwanese who wanted to attend in a personal capacity.
However, “we won’t actively encourage individual participation, since there’s no guarantee of a player’s personal safety because under Hong Kong’s National Security Law, arrests can be made under any excuse,” he said.
China has used the National Security Law to snuff out dissent in the territory after it was rocked by protests two years ago.
Yang said he feared athletes that could easily “cross the red line” if they spoke their minds.
Hong Kong is to host the 11th Gay Games in November next year.
It has been hosted by cities in the US, Australia and Europe.
The Gay Games said in a statement it would follow the convention of Taiwan being called either “Chinese Taipei” or “Taiwan region.”
Athletes from Taiwan and the association were welcome to attend, organizers said.
“We are strictly non-partisan and non-political, and we ask all participants and visitors to respect and observe local laws and customs during their stay in Hong Kong,” it said.
At the 2018 Games in Paris, Taiwanese participants said that they came under pressure from organizers not to fly the flag of the Republic of China.
Ultimately, they waved it at the opening ceremony while holding a banner reading “Taiwan.”
Doing that in Hong Kong could lead to arrest.
Criticism of China by any athlete could also be risky given that the National Security Law forbids any act deemed to be subversion or secession — and the law covers all nationalities.
Hong Kong was announced as the next Gay Games host in 2017, two years before the democracy protests and subsequent crackdown.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,