Author: Amir Ban
Date: 04:18:40 05/20/04
Go up one level in this thread
On May 19, 2004 at 15:55:04, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On May 19, 2004 at 14:31:41, Omid David Tabibi wrote: > >>On May 19, 2004 at 13:29:38, Robert Hyatt wrote: >> >>>On May 19, 2004 at 06:14:12, Omid David Tabibi wrote: >>> >>>>On May 19, 2004 at 06:07:45, Bryan Hofmann wrote: >>>> >>>>>On May 19, 2004 at 05:33:50, Richard Pijl wrote: >>>>> >>>>>>On May 19, 2004 at 05:05:54, Jouni Uski wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>>>Number 1 favourite is missing, why? >>>>>>> >>>>>>>Jouni >>>>>> >>>>>>Hydra is officially from the UAE. As I understood the sponsors do not allow >>>>>>Hydra to participate in an event in Israel. >>>>>>Richard. >>>>> >>>>>Someone please tell me that this is a rumor or missunderstanding. They banned a >>>>>chess engine from participation due to the country of its creator? >>>> >>>>Exactly the opposite. We (organizers) told the Hydra team that they are welcomed >>>>to play in Israel under the UAE flag. But apparently their sponsors decided that >>>>they don't want to play in Israel. >>>> >>>>Last time an engine was banned from participation due to the country of its >>>>creator was in Jakarta WMCCC 1996. The Junior team was not allowed to play there >>>>because Junior is an Israeli program. >>> >>>I was under the impression that was not exactly the truth, the whold truth and >>>nothing but the truth. In fact, Junior was expected there. I received a phone >>>call in the wee hours of the morning from Bruce Moreland, asking me to help him >>>contact Amir since they had not shown up. >>> >>>I believe this was a case of "they didn't feel welcome and chose not to attend >>>for that reason." IE I can't really fault someone for not wanting to fly a UAE >>>flag in the middle of Israel either. >>> >>>So, IMHO it was more a matter of they didn't participate for many good reasons, >>>but I don't think they were _prevented_ from participating... >> >>Based on what I have read and heard, it was made clear to them that they cannot >>play under the Israeli flag in Jakarta. In other words, they were prevented from >>participation. Of course Amir or Shay can correct me if I'm wrong. > >Probably was (a) a sane decision to not fly an Israeli flag there and (b) a >reasonable decision for them not to attend if they could not. As I said, a bit >of both... > The story was completely different. The problem was not a flag but a visa, and the culprits were not the Indonesian government but the Indonesian WMCCC organizers. When reading the below you need to understand that it became clear to us gradually, since throughout the period neither the organizers nor the ICCA were talking to us. To get to Jakarta we needed a visa, and as I understood later, that needed an invitation by the WMCCC organizers. An official in our foreign ministry explained to us that there is no problem in going to Indonesia, and reeled off a list of Israeli academics, businessmen and others who were recently in Indonesia. However, to get a visa you need an invitation from a local organization, and that we didn't have. I wrote to the Indonesian university organizers asking an invitation, and did not get a reply. An email to the ICCA to expedite things also produced nothing. Our foreign ministry advisor was not suprised to hear that a university is involved. He explained to us that in Muslim countries the intellectual elite are often the most hostile. They didn't want us there, and that's the story. The ICCA woke up very late, and then were concerned mainly with absolving themselves from blame. They handed us a statement draft by us stating that everything was fine and no one's at fault. We refused to sign. We were offered a last-minute option of playing remote, which we didn't reject outright, but after considering the lunacy of playing for a week in the small hours of the night, the fact that we didn't know anything about the connection, and have never talked to the organizers, we declined. The upside was that it made Paris 1977 more sweet. Amir
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