RGF vs the World Summary

General Go Discussion
110

I had never heard of her or any other EGF officials before this issue, but apparently she has been working there for a long time and did a lot of good things fro EFG.
Not an easy thing to tell someone you work(ed) with, in their face, to get out because they were just born somewhere else.

Now there is a question I also share.

Let us all remember the EU values/ideals:

Excluding children and sanctioning people due to their country of birth are notably absent.

“Equality is about equal rights for all citizens before the law.”
We should amend that adding “unless you are born in a country we currently don’t like” :stuck_out_tongue:

“The EU is based on the rule of law”
What law says that we can confiscate your stuff if your country of birth does something bad? Because a lot of people are advocating for that.

“Human rights are protected by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. These cover the right to be free from discrimination on the basis of sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation, the right to the protection of your personal data, and or the right to get access to justice.”

We tossed out our EU ideals for some cheap social justice points.
We, ourselves, denied the changes in our world.
And soon it will backfire.
We went from cancelling criminals, abusers and creeps, to cancelling children and whole nationalities.

At least the EGF stood to a reasonable middle ground, unlike other organisations we hear from.

Carlin said it best:
“Rights are not rights if the government can take them away. They are temporary priviledges.”
We either realise that this is now the situation we live in and not some distant SciFi dystopia that will never come to pass, or we will soon be in a far worse situation.

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112

I forgot to ask since this exploded, but why is Iceland so much on the hard side?

Just personal feelings or is there a political reason I’m missing?

113

The Germans provided “raw” numbers and then weighted. The results slightly differ from Sofiams at the end there.

Hello,

I’ll be with my President until the new election in May, so I’d like to briefly report on the votes from today’s extraordinary EGF meeting. I will use the form: [question] [result] [vote by number of federations yes-no abstention] [vote weighted → that counts] [our voting behavior]; [short explanation].

Should all tournaments in Russia be cancelled and new ones not awarded until revoked? Yes 27-1-1 58-4-2 Yes; As decided and announced.

Should Russian players not be allowed to represent their country (i.e. play under a neutral flag)? Yes 21-4-4 49-8-7 Yes; As decided and announced.

Should the Russian federation be suspended until revoked? Yes 18-9-2 40-20-4 Yes; As decided and announced.

Should the Russian federation be expelled? No 4-22-1 7-51-2 No; As decided and announced.

Should Russian players’ permission to participate in European tournaments be revoked? No 12-14-3 24-32-8 Abstention; The discussion on this was controversial and ambiguous. Therefore, contrary to our original decision, we abstained. I want to note that a German Yes would not have changed the overall decision.

Should Natalia be excluded from the EGF board? Became obsolete, since Natalia, after suspension of the Russian Federation, resigned from her position herself. Formally, the vote was no: 8-14-7 15-32-17 abstention; we wanted to vote yes, but Martin Stiassny asked not to break his team, besides Natalia never represented Russia in EGF Board. This was new information for us, which is why we chose abstention.

Do the same sanctions apply to the Belarusian Federation? Yes 22-3-2 47-9-4 Yes; Seemed logical to us. The Belarusian federation is also suspended, no tournaments will be held in Belarus and players are not allowed to represent the country.

Translated with DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator (free version)

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114

I want to add that the election mentioned in the first paragraph will be an early election after a majority of members of the managing board found the attacks against them caused by their position on the matter too hard to bear.

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115

What has happened in German go community? The initial position quoted was for no action, but then Germany voted for it? So lots of members criticised the board for the no action position and they changed to reflect members views?

116

That is incredibly unfortunate. It’s sad to see “armchair activists” ruining everything these days.

They forget that destroying is easy. Building is hard.

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117

I don’t know about the position of Iceland in general, but I note that only 10 people from Iceland have or have had an EGF rating.

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118

According to the discussion thread the following happened: The initial statement was never meant to be published. At the time the German association made a public statement the position already changed to support the proposal of the French federation over the one from Cyprus. Still the Board members were attacked strongly so that at least one member had a panick attack.

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119

I am from Czech Republic and I have something to say about it. That Russian oppression lasted for about 41 years. Approximately from 1948 to 1989. After so called velvet revolution, there were some years of freedom and calm time. People were happy to be able to freely express themselves. Some people were still feeling bitter about Russians, but there was not present any “witch hunting” in mainstream media etc. Sometime after 2010, there started to appear gradual change. There started blaming of Russians in mainstream media on any occassion and there started public manipulative expressions of non-profit organization funded from foreign western countries. For example, USA has law known as FARA, but such law is not in Czech Republic and basically any foreign country can support any non-profit organization without need to mark any connections. Also many mainstream media there have foreign owners. The result is, there is constant bashing of anything Russian for more than decade already. And not only that, there are actions beyond that. Organizations and movements like Czech Elfs, We Are Here and many others are organized to monitor social media and discussions in mainstream media and to mass downvote critical opinions or even to report them as breaking community rules (even if those posts do not break rules), so such comments are deleted from social media, because of organized mass reporting.
“Do you criticize European Union? You are Russian troll paid by FSB! Do you criticize USA? You are Russian troll paid by FSB! Do you have non-mainstream opinion? You are Russian troll paid by FSB!”

There are also politicians in Czech government, who are members of such kind of non profit organizations financially supported from foreign countries and they are adding to this atmosphere too. In such environment, where is relatively small, but very vocal group, supported by mainstream media, it is hard to try to maintain objective views. Somebody here mentioned that there will be new elections for German go association because of some members resigned from their positions due to big pressure put on them for their opinions. Similar pressure is noticeable in Czech Republic too in many areas and it is strictly anti Russian and it was like that for years already. Long before Ukraine or Crimea.

To sum it up there is very polarized society in Czech Republic and there is constant immense pressure for anti Russian mood, which is supported by mainstream media and non profit organizations supported from foreign western countries. It does not mean, that Czech people hate Russians in general, just such opinion is being publically forced onto our society. You can even became target of offenses just for being neutral, because that means, you are not strictly anti Russian and thus from point of view of some people, you must be a Russian agent then. It is also worth to mention, I wrote on Czech go server polite opinion why I disagree with sanctions against Russian Go Federation and it was just deleted within minute without any explanation.

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120

As far as I know balkans are the only region among slavs where this isn’t a general public opinion, forced or not. Though afaik in countries like serbia there are sociolinguistic movements against russia in the form of abandoning cyrillics, related or not.

121

I muted this thread because f*** politicising a Go forum of all places, and I’m going to mute it again after this post, but I came back in because I hadn’t originally been sure how to phrase my comment.

I’ll just say simply that sporting organisations should not take political stances, because their memberships have not given the organisations a mandate to represent them politically.

And also that demanding the RGF denounce the actions of their government is, practically speaking, a non-starter and really quite silly.

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122

Yeah how dare we discuss the goings on of the EGF in a Go Forum :joy:

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123

How? Cyril and Methodius were Eastern Romans (Byzantines, if you will), born and raised in Thessaloniki ( now in Greece), what do they have to do with Russia specifically? And what alphabet would they use after 1200 years of using that one? This is one of the oddest ideas I’ve heard today.

This, plus:

I do not think that anyone started playing Go to get into a situation where they’d have a panic attack over politics.

124

Croatian is almost the same language as Serbian but uses the latin alphabet.

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125

This is what I have always thought and also what is written in the EGF constitution, but I did not know how to respond when it was pointed out to me that inaction is also a political statement.

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126

Because the biggest and the most influential slavic language is russian and it uses cyrillic.

Gaj’s script or whatever it’s called, the latin way of writing the “yugoslavian” language. As the other poster said croatia uses latin and their language is effectively the same. It’s called serbo-croatian for political reasons and I think there’s one more version with another country added in (montenegro?), but effectively it’s as different as the north and south of the english english.
In serbia everything “outside” is still written in cyrillic, but in croatia in no longer is.

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127

And board members (which is different from just playing Go)

Are two different things.

As long as people make the naive and simplistic wrong assumption that politics is only and strictly “political party A vs political party B” we’ll keep having this conversation…

There’s no public action without political undercurrent. None. And that people don’t realize it doesn’t mean there aren’t. They just don’t realize them. I hope we can get this out of the way, but I don’t see it happening any time soon…

Supporting women’s participation in Go is a political action.
Where and when a tournament or conference will take place is a political decision (I guess some naive people think it’s not…).
Who gets invited where is a political decision (see parenthesis above).
Scholarships to poor students is a political action.
I could go on and on.

Supporting the victims of war is a humane action, but also political, because how can it not be.

Supporting a political party is different, and that indeed should stay out of sports and anywhere it doesn’t strictly belong.

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128

As we all know

Taking into consideration the complicated international situation and controversial attitude towards Russian athletes, to prevent possible conflicts and to protect all participating children, primarily our children, from possible moral and psychological traumas the Executive Committee of the Russian Go Federation made a decision to cancel the participation of the Russian team in the coming European Go Championship on March 10-12, 2022.

We hope for the soonest resolution of relations with the European Go Society.

It is a difficult decision for us, our children and juniors are the strongest in Europe but we are taking this step to protect them.

We hope for your understanding.

Translated with DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator (free version)

Also from Ukrainian forums:

Dear Martin, Lorenz, Jaroslav, Catalin,

As a former Vice-President of the Polish Go Association and the father of a EYGC participant I am observing with concern the discussion on the peaceful and apolitical competition at the Go board. Regardless of whether it takes place during a tournament in the same Hall or online.
The possibility of allowing young go players to compete with Russia agreed before the start of the war by Russia due to visa problems caused by the world Covid-19 pandemic is now completely outdated.
The fact that the EGF Board can allow Russian juniors to participate in the EYGC puts the need to make a moral choice not only to players from the country plunged in a cruel war, but also to all other youngsters and their parents who oppose the unprecedented and unimaginably cruel war. Moreover, the manifestation of solidarity and opposition to Russian aggression by refusing to play with a player from Russia (irrelevant whether face-to-face or online) will result in punishing such a child with defeat by a walkover.
Russian arguments about the deterioration of the moral condition of Russian children are nothing compared to the harm suffered by Ukrainian children who lose their lives and families in the rubble of the bombed homeland. The lack of responsibility for starting a war does not mean that Russian citizens, including children, can avoid the consequences of this war.
For the winners, the lack of competition with players from Russia disrupts the results of the competition less then the lack of competition with the Ukrainians who will be absent due to the war. That’s because the result will also be influenced by forfeits due to the refusal to play games against the Russians. Therefore, the decision not to admit players from Russia to EYGC is a “less worse” and this solution that will remove the burden and the injustice of each of the decisions made in the remaining participating children.
Appeals to the EGF Board to prevent Russian young players from participating in the EYGC.

Yours sincerely
Robert Bugaj
Member (ex-Vicepresident) of the Polish Go Association

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129

How can someone say that.
That’s shameful.
We don’t take out harm to children to measure it against the wall.
We try to minimize it however we can. Some harm to children is acceptable, because?.. I’d be deeply ashamed for such words to leave my mouth.

Actively punish a child without remorse because it was born a certain way. Disgusting.

Also “unprecedented”? Really?? Where has this person been living? :roll_eyes:

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130

On the other hand one of the spoils of war is the fact that all of these delusional lunatics who appear to be in charge of certain portion of the community get to announce themselves as such to the rest of the european community.

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