Freediving World Championships Taiwan's flags were removed, 10 countries withdrew their flags to support the organizers apologize: worry about China's suspension of live broadcast

Freediving World Championships are being held in Cyprus, and Taiwan has also sent 5 players to participate. However, the organizer removed the flag of the Republic of China during the broadcast last Friday (28th), which caused controversy. Players from 10 regions including Japan, Russia, and the United States offered to “remove the flag” in support. The organizer, the International Freediving Development Association (AIDA) yesterday (30th) issued a statement apologizing to Taiwan, and revealed that the flag withdrawal was due to the suspension of the live broadcast by the Chinese authorities.

Check AIDA’s live broadcast on September 28 In the fragment, it can be seen that at the beginning of the game, the Taiwanese player Hou Yiming still had the flag of the Republic of China next to his name. However, more than three hours later, when the list of players was displayed at the end of the game, the flag of the Republic of China was removed, and Hou Yiming became the only player who did not display the flag of his region on the screen. In the competition yesterday (30th), Hou Yiming, who played again, displayed a large national flag of the Republic of China on his own after finishing the competition, and called it “I come from Taiwan”.

AIDA Taiwan Branch quoted the organizer to explain that the event was broadcast live on the Chinese platform, and the platform said that the film with the flag of the Republic of China might be removed from the shelves. The organizer took the initiative to remove the flag in order to be able to broadcast it smoothly. The AIDA Taiwan branch stated that the flag removal did not have the consent of the Taiwan side and described the practice as “self-censorship.” AIDA apologized to Taiwan on the same day, but did not intend to replace the flag. It only offered to display the Chinese Taipei Olympic flag “Plum Blossom Flag” or to leave the two options blank.

The incident aroused the support of participating teams from different regions, AIDA Japan The branch took the lead in proposing to withdraw the Japanese flag, saying that it could not ignore the unfair treatment of Taiwan alone, hoping to resist terrible political interference, and believed that political interference in the movement could not be allowed. Afterwards, Russia, the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, South Korea, France, Germany, etc. also joined. In the end, 10 countries also proposed to withdraw their national flags in support. As a result, a whole row of blanks appeared next to the players’ names in the broadcast screen of the event.

AIDA finally issued a statement yesterday (30th) Taiwan apologized, and the organizer explained that the Chinese authorities were surprised by the suspension of the live broadcast. The team was not ready to deal with it in a short time, but it would learn from its mistakes and set up different live broadcasts to prevent the same situation from happening again. The conference party stated that a video conference will be arranged next week to answer the questions of the teams and hope the incident will pass.

President Tsai Ing-wen is on FB this morning (1st) Post a post to thank all countries for their support, and also thank the contestants for “using actions to let the world see Taiwan.” She described free diving as “wandering in the ocean without boundaries, but some people want to draw the boundaries for political purposes.”