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.
Police have issued warnings against traveling to Cambodia or Thailand when others have paid for the travel fare in light of increasing cases of teenagers, middle-aged and elderly people being tricked into traveling to these countries and then being held for ransom. Recounting their ordeal, one victim on Monday said she was asked by a friend to visit Thailand and help set up a bank account there, for which they would be paid NT$70,000 to NT$100,000 (US$2,136 to US$3,051). The victim said she had not found it strange that her friend was not coming along on the trip, adding that when she
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
INFRASTRUCTURE: Work on the second segment, from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, is expected to begin in 2028 and be completed by 2039, the railway bureau said Planned high-speed rail (HSR) extensions would blanket Taiwan proper in four 90-minute commute blocs to facilitate regional economic and livelihood integration, Railway Bureau Deputy Director-General Yang Cheng-chun (楊正君) said in an interview published yesterday. A project to extend the high-speed rail from Zuoying Station in Kaohsiung to Pingtung County’s Lioukuaicuo Township (六塊厝) is the first part of the bureau’s greater plan to expand rail coverage, he told the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times). The bureau’s long-term plan is to build a loop to circle Taiwan proper that would consist of four sections running from Taipei to Hualien, Hualien to
RSS