But What About the Truth?
The Canadian embassy’s letter has not satisfied Canada’s Xiangqi players. The Edmonton club still believes that an entirely legitimate application was refused for unknown reasons. Toronto’s players must organize the 2002 visit, and are worried about its success.
Edmonton faxed a letter to Beijing on August 6. Club president, and former Canadian champion, Ung DAU, queried several statements made by the Manager of the Non-Immigrant Visa Section, David Manicom. As of August 17, Edmonton has not received a response. Manicom had already told me by email that he would not be discussing the case any further.
DAU’s letter states: "We are baffled as to the reasoning behind the decision... Your office had requested documents proving that indeed a chess tournament had been planned and scheduled. We complied with the necessary papers. Those documents provided should have been more than sufficient in proving the event was genuine."
DAU also wants to know how Canada’s embassy could fail to be impressed by the players’ extensive travel history. He says: "The Chinese delegation has been invited and successfully toured Canadian cities seven times prior to this year without incident. To our knowledge, one of the applicants has already toured Canada two times as part of the Chinese touring team. Apparently such travel history did not surface when your office investigated their applications, and such documents were not requested from our association to aid you."
Elton Yuen, President of the Toronto Xiangqi Association, is responsible for the next visit. He is genuinely worried that another rejection will do serious damage to the Canadian clubs’ links to China. He says: "We are not trying to find out if the visa officers made a wrong decision. We just want to find out more details about why the visa applications were rejected so that we can avoid such circumstances in two years."
Manicom’s letter says that three quarters of visitor visa applications are accepted. Canada’s Xiangqi players simply can’t understand how a selection of the world’s best chess players could fall into the bottom 25%. They are now preparing to make further inquiries to Canadian officials.
This writer can’t understand why Canada doesn’t seem to care. The Chinese grandmasters represent traditional Chinese culture at its apex. When they applied for Canadian visas, they were simply doing their jobs. And Canada told them, quite inaccurately, and in cold, legalistic terms, that they are phonies. This is no small matter.
It is understandable that Canada’s officials want to deflect or share the procedural blame. But their slowness to acknowledge that this is not what Canada wants to see happen, and to demonstrate Canadian honour, is much more mysterious - at least to me.
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