Letter from Russia, Mr. Pavel Chernousov, president of All-RTKF

World Traditional Karate-Do Federation WTKF • Oct 03, 2019

See the message of our member from Russia Mr. Pavel Chernousov. President of ALL-RUSSIAN TRADITIONAL KARATE FEDERATION

Исх. № П38-10/19

03. 10. 2019

To: WTKF national federations

FWD: decisions of meeting in Prague

Dear colleagues!

You received the minutes of the meeting held in Prague on 28th September which was designated by the organizers as an extraordinary General Assembly of members and a letter signed by Mr. Savchenko naming himself a new WTKF President.

This document contains a decision to transfer XXXIV WTKF European Championship to Brno, Czech Republic. It also contains accusation against Russia (All-Russian Traditional Karate Federation) of destabilizing the situation around the tournament. We regard the aforementioned accusation as an insulting towards All-RTKF, the decision to transfer the Championship unsubstantiated and we consider it necessary to explain our view of the ongoing situation.

First of all, during all this period of conflict between the WTKF Board of Directors and national federations of the Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland and Lithuania All-Russian Traditional Karate Federation behaved in full accordance with the decisions of WTKF Board of Directors.

Understanding the complexity of situation, we couldn’t allow ourselves to take any decision without the WTKF Board of Directors approval. As a national member, we had no any other legitimate source of authority to get the approval from. We could not act in accordance with the demands of any national federations, doesn’t matter how substantiated they were. Until rejected by a legitimate General Assembly or proven unlawful through the court, the decisions of the WTKF Board of Directors stay valid and mandatory to all national members.

Thus, we couldn’t issue official letters of invitation to the national federations suspended by the decision of the WTKF Board of Directors. As a host of the European Championship we were deeply concerned with the situation and really interested in solving the problem. We officially addressed the Board of Directors with a request to allow those athletes and judges from the suspended federations who hadn’t been suspended personally to take part in the European Championship. The WTKF Board of Directors issued a letter with the requirements to the suspended federations to be fulfilled in order to allow the majority of their members to participate. The suspended federations refused to fulfil.

As for inviting all other European national federations, the usual procedure is to publish the official documents of the tournament on the WTKF web-site that was done in due time. We hadn’t received application or a request for letter of invitations from any European national federation except for Armenia, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic and the UK. We regard the situation as a boycott as not only suspended but also many other European national federations did nothing to inform us about their decision to take part. That and not the inviting of Asian states or Donetsk People’s Republic (please, read below) was and stays the strongest threat to the status of the tournament and the image of WTKF.

We received quite often questions whether the Championship will or will not take place (far before the meeting in Prague). Somebody was eager to bring rumors even to Russia that the Championship will not happen. That was a real process of destabilizing. A really strange coincidence that finally some people made a decision to cancel the Championship in Russia. Mr. Radek Janus showed us his deep concern asking how many countries will participate, being absolutely aware of the situation.

Now we can see rather clear, what for. Having this in mind, one cannot be surprised that the meeting in Prague, many federations, we think, have been waiting the results of, was planned for the end of September in order to make nearly impossible to get visas for those federations who finally saw that the meeting was nothing but personal conversation of some people.

The organizers of the meeting in Prague also stress Russia refused to negotiate on this troubled issued. This very statement is a total falsehood. We communicated with Mr. Radek Janus and Mr. Giedrius Dranevicius through the e-mail and phone. We couldn’t and didn’t want to visit the meetings during Gasshuku in August and the meeting in Prague as they were not authorized by the WTKF Board of Directors and also we could not get visas on time. We willingly refused to take part in the meeting held in Prague, as the majority of national federations did, in order not to help the organizers to fulfill the requirement of the WTKF Statute to have one third of active members present.

The minutes issued by the meeting in Prague also contain an accusation of inviting non-European and non-existing countries as it violates the status of European Championship. First, the “nonexisting states” will not participate in the Championship as countries, although the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republic had already took part in numerous Russian and some international tournaments under their flags. We kindly ask our colleagues to pay attention to the fact, that Donetsk People’s Republic team have already taken part in IJKA World Open Shotokan Championship, World Combat Sambo Federation (WCSF) and Open Asian Cup in Koshiki karate. At least seven sports federations of Donetsk People’s Republic got the official opportunity to take part in European and World Champiopnships. The decision to invite the representatives of Luhansk and Donetsk People Republic’s was taken in accordance with the position of WTKF towards the ongoing political conflicts all around the world sincerely expressed during the Children for Peace World Cup (Geneva, 2014). The athletes will participate in the European Championship as members of All-RTKF and Russian Fudokan teams. Mr. Savchenko states the Ukraine will not be able to take part in the tournament of Russia because of Donetsk People’s Republic participation. That’s the second big falsehood as there exists an official decision by the Ukrainian Ministry of Youth and Sports prohibiting the Ukrainian athletes to take part in any competitions organized in Russia.

Second, we’d like to inform that the decision to invite Asian countries was approved by the WTKF Board of Directors and published on the official WTKF web-site and we didn’t receive any claims against it until four European federations were suspended. We also we’d like to mention that national federations of Armenia and Israel being not located in Europe are respected and active members and have been taking part in ITKF / WTKF European Championships for a long time. Not to be forgotten, there hasn’t been any time WTKF Asian Championship, thus the Asian countries cannot annually take part in WTKF international tournaments unless being invited to the European Championship. By the way, we’d like to ask our respected colleagues, whether participation of Kazakhstan, Georgia, Cyprus, Turkey and Azerbajdzhan in European UEFA Championship 2016 and 2020 violated and will violate international rules, for which our colleagues are so deeply concerned.

We’d also like to ask whether the European Cup organized by our respected colleagues in Poland in 2018 was not deteriorating the image of WTKF when the Polish athletes contained more than a half of 16 participants. We cannot also skip the statement made by Mr. Maciejewski that he and his colleagues are eager to support international tournaments mentioning International Tournament “Kumite Evolution” in Irkutsk as an example. We would like to kindly remind our colleagues that already three times they had an opportunity to express their solidarity and support to this event. For the first time only a team of Polish athletes came thanks to our President Mr. Kwiecinski, for the second we had only Serbia (thanks to Irkutsk relations with Fudokan) and Mongolia (also without any influence by the side of our European colleagues) and for the third time only Serbia was present. Based on that, we have no choice but to consider the statement in question as a good example of the way the respected colleagues build their policy.

Actually, the decision to transfer the Championship to Czech Republic besides all the proves and accusations has a mathematically beautiful explanation. Polish and Czech national federations are going to lose thousands of dollars to be paid by the Sports Ministries in case they don’t take part in the Championship to be held in Russia. And they will not. The Ukraine cannot participate according to the Ukrainian law because of the political situation. And, the last but not least, Lithuania governing alongside with Czech the World Budo Karate Association has a good, sorry to say, financial reason to unite European Championship with 2nd WBKA World Children Cup (an event that by itself had to diminish the number or participants in Russia).

To conclude, we affirm that the decisions made by the meeting in Prague are nothing but a personal communication as the requirement of one third active members to be present was not fulfilled.

Especially the decision to transfer the Championship to Czech is unlawful, unsubstantiated and is an insulting to All-RTKF. None of the reasons mentioned by in documents we discussed is sufficient. We also want to express our deep gratitude and respect to all those national leaders who refused to take part in the meeting held in Prague understanding the real goals and possible aftermaths of this event. We will do our best to help those national federations who now can decide to take part in the only legitimate European Championship to be held in Russia to get visas in due time, it is still possible. Let’s be strong and honest, that is what we are taught by our martial art and the leader being in head of us.