National anthem blunder: Hong Kong leader warns of ‘appropriate actions’ against sports officials, assures vigilant athletes they have nothing to fear
- John Lee reiterates call for internet giant Google to adjust search results
- Association involved in recent mix-up overseas during hockey game says it is ready to accept any consequences
Hong Kong’s leader has warned of “appropriate actions” against top officials of sports groups over national anthem blunders and assured athletes they will not be penalised if they abide by the rules, with the association involved in a recent mix-up at an ice hockey game saying it was ready to accept any consequences.
“The national anthem is a matter of dignity, it is a matter that deals with the emotion of our people. And the people, whose feelings will be hurt, must be taken care of,” Lee said before his weekly Executive Council meeting.
Hong Kong sports minister to ‘get tough’ if rule breaches led to hockey anthem blunder
The Sports Federation and Olympic Committee of Hong Kong, China, which submitted a report on the incident to the government on Monday, has accused the city’s ice hockey association of “paying only lip service” to guidelines designed to prevent such blunders.
Noting the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau will be meeting federation representatives to investigate the incident, Lee on Tuesday said follow-up actions would be taken.
Google’s anthem results for Hong Kong have improved after optimisation: Sun Dong
“My guidance [on] this is very clear: those who are in management or who are the leading officials of any sports organisations, if they haven’t done what they should do, then they should be held accountable and actions should be taken appropriately,” he warned.
“But I also want to ensure that the players who have done their part, that their interest should be taken care of ... [and] they will not be affected [in] their training and participation in games,” Lee said.
Under the latest guidelines, a sports association should assign a team leader to provide event organisers with a USB drive that contains a copy of the national anthem, which can either be obtained from a toolkit provided by the federation or downloaded from an official website.
The Ice Hockey Association on Tuesday released a copy of emails between the Hong Kong team leader Annie Kwan Yuen-yee and the organiser of the event in Bosnia to show that the association had “done its best” by providing the USB drive and asking him to listen to the national anthem before the game.
In the email, Kwan mentioned that she was under investigation and urged the organiser to “tell the true events”, as Hong Kong’s sports federation “didn’t believe” what she had reported.
The Ice Hockey Association of Bosnia’s chief of competition Mirzet Hodzic in a response to the email confirmed the group had received a link with Hong Kong’s national anthem, but said its staff downloaded the song from the internet instead as they “did not know how to operate the link”.
“Hong Kong team leader Ms Kwan has approached me and many other officials many times, but we did not offer for them to check since we thought we already [had] it … I appeared on the rink only during the prize-giving ceremony, [there] was no way she could check with me,” he said.
“We can verify that Ms Kwan is highly responsible and had tried her very best to look for our help during the championship.”
Hong Kong sports body, ice hockey team clash over national anthem blunder
The Hong Kong’s Ice Hockey Association said in a statement that it was “a hard truth that the wrong song was played, even though the guidelines could not be fully implemented due to the objective conditions, and we are prepared to accept the consequences of that”.
But it also said the guidelines could be improved, suggesting that team members should not enter the rink unless the national anthem had been cross-checked and verified.
City leader Lee pointed to the hockey mix-up – the latest in a series of blunders in recent months – as mistakes by organisers who chose to download the national anthem from Google searches instead of official websites.
“I think a responsible organisation, such as Google, should do its best to ensure that the national anthem, when somebody searches for it, is displayed correctly, because that applies to all countries,” he said.
“We [have been] in discussion with them for a long time and I hope they will be helpful in ensuring that the right national anthems of countries [are played]. They can do it, and it is a matter of whether they are willing to do it.”
Hong Kong authorities have made several requests to Google to address the perceived problem since November, with the strongest criticism coming from security chief Chris Tang Ping-keung, who accused the American technology firm of “double standards”, adding it was “incomprehensible” and “unacceptable” that the issue was not fixed.
The central government had also weighed in on the matter, saying it would back the city’s “resolute defence of the national anthem’s dignity”.
But Google argued in December it did not “manually manipulate organic web listings to determine the ranking of a specific page” and results would be removed only for reasons outlined in its policy, such as “valid legal requests”.
The Post also reached out to the Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau and the sports federation for comment, both of whom said no updates were currently available.
