Taipei, June 29 (CNA) Taiwan's government said Thursday it was regrettable that an overseas Taiwanese group had been rejected for an upcoming cultural festival in France on grounds that there are no official diplomatic ties between the two sides.
Nonetheless, Taiwan will continue to assist its overseas groups to take part in public events in France, as part of an effort to build closer bilateral cultural exchanges, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) in Taipei said in a statement.
The statement was released after the organizers of the Fete des Bannieres du Monde - the festival of world banners - rejected an application by the Association Culturelle des Taiwanais de Lyon (ACTL), which promotes Taiwan globally, to participate in the festival in Lyon on September 16.
The annual "Fete des Bannieres du Monde" usually features a parade, a market, and participants from at least a dozen countries, dressed in traditional costumes.
In a press release, the Lyon festival committee said on June 24 that only those associations from nations that have an official embassy or a consulate in France can apply to join festival, as the annual event celebrates the many consulates in Lyon and gives visitors an opportunity to learn about countries around the world.
France, like most countries in the world, does not have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and therefore Taiwan's representative office in France is not considered an embassy or a consulate, the committee said.
According to the ACTL, however, it was informed by the festival organizers that its application had been rejected after the Chinese participants threatened to withdraw if Taiwan was allowed to join the event.
The ACTL first wrote to the festival's organizers last October to inquire about the application process, and it was asked to wait until the members of the current festival committee and last year's had discussed the matter, ACTL Chairwoman Yang Pei-yu (楊佩瑜) told CNA earlier this month.
Despite follow-up inquiries, the ACTL said, it did not receive a clear response until the end of May, when the organizers said that during the discussions, the Chinese had pressured them into blocking the Taiwanese group's participation.
Since then, the ACTL said, it has been seeking to the bring the issue to the attention of the French media.
The festival organizers later said that the ACTL's report on the reason behind its rejection was a misunderstanding on its part, and that there was no issue of Chinese interference. Rather, it is the policy of the organizers to allow only participants from countries with which France has formal diplomatic ties, the organizers said.
According to the ACTL, however, similar Chinese interference also occurred last year, when its members, who were not officially part of the festival, were prevented from displaying Taiwan's national flag.
The Chinese attendees threatened to call the police, and the organizers then asked the ACTL to remove the Taiwan flag and advised that the organization register for the 2023 event to showcase Taiwan.
Meanwhile, French scholar Antoine Bondaz, a research fellow and the director of both the Korea Program and the Taiwan Program at the French think tank Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS), expressed his disappointment earlier this month over Taiwan's exclusion from the festival.
"It is in no way a political event, but a cultural event which makes it possible to present cultural diversity to the general public, as in many similar events throughout France," he tweeted in French on June 10. "Chinese pressure, wherever it comes from, is just unacceptable."
"We are in France, and if Chinese cultural associations do not wish to participate in such a cultural event if a Taiwanese association participates, they are free not to participate. But pressure is unacceptable. We are not in China," he added.
