An open letter to everyone working in the media:

When you report on the Tokyo Olympics this summer, please be kind to Taiwan. 

The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which seems to be acting as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has banned Taiwanese athletes from using their country's name, national flag, and national anthem during Olympic competition. 

The Taiwanese are instead forced to compete as “Chinese Taipei,” an imaginary country that does not exist on any map. 

Millions of Taiwanese find this humiliating and offensive. As an American, my own view is that the IOC is being egregiously disrespectful. 

One of my Taiwanese friends recently told me that she was saddened by the fact that “there is no Taiwan at the Olympics.” It’s as if Taiwan were an invisible country. 

It is not.

The IOC does not treat any other country like it treats Taiwan. Instead of abiding by the Olympic Charter and fulfilling its mission to combat discrimination of all forms, the IOC is flagrantly doing the opposite.  

Even worse, Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to a nationality. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his [or her] nationality.”

By banning the Taiwanese from expressing their nationality, the IOC is depriving them of a human right. 

On behalf of more than 132,000 people who have signed an online petition, I am urging everyone who works in the media to think before you speak when reporting on the Olympics this summer. If you don’t acknowledge the Taiwanese for who they are, you will be complicit in the IOC’s human rights violations. 

Taiwan is not Chinese Taipei. Let the world know.

-Lindell Lucy

Let Taiwan Be Taiwan at the Tokyo Olympics
https://www.change.org/let-taiwan-be-taiwan