Real fans waving Tibetan flags are booted from U. stadium

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Several Real Salt Lake fans say their right to free speech was violated when stadium and team officials kicked out fans who had refused to stop waving Tibetan flags during Thursday's exhibition game against the Chinese National Team.

"I was really, really shocked. I couldn't believe this was happening in this country," fan Colin Coker said Friday.

Coker said he and several others, including five Tibetan men, were escorted out of the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium by about 10 officials, including stadium personnel and Real Salt Lake representatives, because they had been waving Tibetan flags and had refused to put them away when the officials told them to do so.

The controversy began shortly after halftime, when Chinese players complained about fans displaying Taiwanese and Tibetan flags and a sign that said "6-4," written in Chinese. That sign referred to June 4, 1989, the date of the Chinese government's attack on protesters in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Members of the Chinese National Team stepped off the field and refused to continue playing unless the flags were put away.

A Chinese team official told the fans to take the flags down and pulled down their "6-4" sign that had been hanging over the front-row railing of the stadium, said fan Brandon Hone, who had waved a Taiwanese flag.

When the fans later pulled out the flags again, stadium officials demanded they put them away and threatened to involve police. When Coker refused, he was escorted from the stadium and told that it was because of the flag, he said. Real went on to defeat the Chinese team, 1-0.

"I'm completely disgusted that we can't express ourselves," Coker said. "I got kicked out of a game for waving a flag in the United States of America, and to me, that is just mind-blowing."

University spokeswoman Coralie Alder on Friday said campus security officers police Real games, but she referred questions about the decisions at the game to Real officials.

Real Salt Lake representative Trey Fitzgerald said the fans were kicked out because their behavior disrupted the game for the other 11,000 fans in the stadium. The manager of the Chinese team would have pulled his team from the field and left the game if the flags weren't removed, Fitzgerald said.

"This is a case where we invited this team here, and we were their host, and we needed to be diplomatic," Fitzgerald said. "Sports is meant to create bridges, not divisions."

Coker, however, sees it as a case of his rights being repressed.

"My free speech and freedom of expression were violated. I don't think that fact can be questioned," Coker said.