It is imperative that karate as an art and as a sport is preserved for the future generation. Today we have noticed that many older masters that trained with the founders of the so-called Ryu-Ha (Styles) are either incapacitated or have passed on. These masters have laid a solid foundation for us to build on and each one had or has his own peculiar preferences in their way and presentation of their respective arts, in many cases this was handed down from father to son and then to future generation in a family as inheritors of a particular styles. In the past 10 years many prominent karate masters have left us and we have seen break away from the original when the founder of inheritor has passed, this has also happened in the multi-style, multi competition based organizations as well, and this is proliferating karate and it is not good for the sport, for its future.
After 20 years of unselfish contribution towards karate unity within many karate structures and after getting back karate’s recognition in the International Olympic Committee, after karate lost their recognition, in 1988, after the World Union of Karate organization (WUKO), now World Karate Federation, failed to unite karate world-wide. The IOC 1010st Session in Monte Carlo made it very ceratin that all karate should be united into one organization, it was the IOC that gave the name World Karate Federation and not WUKO, so in fact WUKO usurped the name of united karate and this was a very illegal undertaking by the European Mafia of the WKF, the chief architect of this illegal aaction was the current President Antonio Espinos, his partner in crime George Yerolimpos and their merry men.
This the false history as published in the WKF website:-
“History
After several decades of rapid worldwide growth, several competitions started to attract karate athletes from several countries during the 1960s.
The different styles of karate, diversity of the rules and lack of unified protocols that govern any type of competition indicated a need to create an international governing body comprising unitedNational Karate Federations that could start to address these issues from a unified global perspective.
Ryoichi Sasakawa, President of the Japan Karate Federation (JKF) and Jacques Delcourt, President of the European Karate Union (EKU) jointly proposed a series of meetings that would produce not only the first amalgamated international rules for sport Karate, but also the establishment of the World Union of Karate Do Organizations (WUKO) on October 10, 1970.
Tokyo was the site where WUKO was inaugurated and where the first WUKO World Championships were held. Portland, Oregon hosted the first meeting of the fledgling WUKO Directing Committee, the objective of which was to lay the foundation for the future of unified sport Karate.
National Karate Federations recognized by their National Olympic Committees and Highest Sport Authorities soon became members and thus WUKO became the most important world governing body for Karate.
The integration of several new organizations during the 1990s saw WUKO membership increase to 150 National Federations. Therefore, a new name that would more accurately reflect the size and scope of the organization was needed. The name of the first International organization representing sport Karate was thus changed to World Karate Federation (WKF) on December 20, 1992.”
From this the WKF is trying to erase very important historically issues that is deliberately left out of all its publication as the current President wants “fill” glory for where karate is today, but unfortunately history is something that is there for all to see and it is very foolhardily for Mr. Espinos to want to write his own history for karate. What is aslo very evident that he has changed the constitution of the WKF to retain himself as President for life as the dictates ONLY allows those that are in the Executive for 8 consecutive year can ONLY qualify to be president. He has conveniently eliminates all of those that had this criteria besides some of his lackeys. It is really amazing what is happening in the World Karate Federation, Why is the IOC not putting an inquiry into Karate? As has been the case with Athletes and Soccer.
See legal attack by WKF on WUKO
It seems the WKF is not over destroying all karate further by spending money on irrelevant court action instead of using the money to develop karate world-wide and to unite karate instead of dividing it further and in our opinion is is what is destroying the image of karate, as we have more conflicts and less dialogue between groups.
History of Karate-do from 1990 to 2015
We have read the “new” created history of the unification of karate and the WKF Presidents role in this historic and defining moment in karate’s history, it is really not good human etiquette, when someone wants to rewrite history to make himself prominent and deletes the efforts of all other who shouldered the burden towards this road of giving dignity to World karate. You can see from the photos in this article there is no Antonio Espinos in these photo, that is because he was not there during the historic signing of the Osaka declaration, it was this historic meeting between two Presidents Delcourt (deceased) from WUKO and Nishiyama (deceased) from ITKF, together with their chosen representative Imtiaz Abdulla (active), Taikichi Mano (deceased) from WUKO.WKF and Rajeev Sinha (active) and Michel Crowe (retired) from ITKF, who were entrusted to get karate unified and accepted by the IOC again in 1995, thus the formation of the Joint Working Commission (JWC), when karate presented its best chance to be readmitted (Karate was removed from the IOC in 1988, due to no unity between the WUKO and the ITKF) into the IOC, as the World Karate Federation (WKF), actually speaking WKF is a merger of the WUKO and ITKF, organizations governing General Karate (WUKO) called K karate in the IOC statutes and Traditional Karate called T karate under the same statutes, so the WKF is a unification of traditional and general karate, but this is far from the truth. In 1994 in Kota Kinabalu, Imtiaz Abdulla was voted with absolute majority at the WUKO/ WUKO Congress as WUKO/WKF Vice President for Traditional karate and Antonio Espinos was voted unanimously as General Vice President so they had the same equal status in the WKF/WUKO. Previously, in 1989 the IOC drafted a set of statutes, drafted by its legal commission under the leadership of Keba Mbaye (Head of IOC Legal Commission) from Senegal, called the Principles of the101st Session decision which the IOC resolved that only in unification can karate be admitted into the Olympic Movement, as a provisional member then, as a full recognition sport and then as a candidate to be included in future Olympic Games, for Karate Unification both side had to fulfill certain fundamental issues before recognition will be given back to karate, for its inclusion in the Olympics. A clearly spelt out process of how and what needs to be achieved was presented to karate and then it was all systems go.
Sosai Kunio Tatsuno then appeared on the scene in 1994 as a very charismatic personality that was once a karate-ka and had just taken the sokeship of Seishinkai, a respected organization created by Shogo Kuniba who was a colleague of Mr. Ryoichi Sasagawa (non karate-ka) the founding president of the JKF, who was a prominent political and business figure in Japan, Tatsino was asked my Mr. Jacques Delcourt to assist in the unification of karate with the ITKF and Nishiyama in particular, Tatsuno needed this as he wanted to clean up his past image and saw this as an opportunity to redeem himself in Japan and make a name for himself in the world of Karate. Unfortunately he was naive and inexperienced and required much advised and schooling on matters of world karate politics, he then entrusted the advised of Imtiaz Abdulla and both gentlemen traveled throughout the world lobbying IOC members and karate leaders to give karate a chance of one day getting KARATE TO THE OLYMPICS. Little did they realise that this not what European Karate under the leadership of Delcourt and Espinos wanted, they wanted total power and at all cost without unification. They used this occasion, Tatsuno’s resources and this effort to get the IOC to return the provisional recognition, and when this was achieved the true objectives of what their intention was, was revealed, dirty politics, money and greed was the agenda. In 1998 a grueling election was held in Brazil where the incumbent President Delcourt decided to retire, due to an investigation in France about embezzlement of funds from the French Karate Federation and the contestation for President was between Antonio Espinos, Giuseppe Peliconne, and Imtiaz Abdulla this represented the group that wanted unity (Imtiaz Abdulla) and those that opposed unity (Antonio Espinos), it was a very clear position that the elections in Brazil were rigged from the start, the votes we loaded on the Espinos side, and candidates were paid for voting for Espinos, it was amazing that many countries that were not members we immediately given membership and allowed to vote. The voting audit committee was lead by Jacques Delcourt and his cronies thus ensuring a win by all cost. This resulted in Espinos purging all those that were a treat to him and the road is littered with corpses of this targeted and ruthless agenda of removing all records and all memory of anyone who was part of the unification or had anything to do with it. Thus today we read a history that is distorted and written to propagate a theory that it was Espinos and ONLY Espinos that got karate to the Olympic road. This is far from the truth.
For nearly 20 years, Imtiaz Abdulla and Rajeev Sinha, have been a part of the unification process where they relentlessly worked to unify world karate, but were always betrayed and sinister forces and methods used to derail this noble and important process for ALL karate in the world. As responsible and dignified persons with world repute and experience they decided after giving karate 20 years of getting Karate to the Olympics which failed, to recommit themselves together with Sosai Chodoin the person that sponsored Mr. Kunio Tatsuno, and encouraged him to fight and push for karate’s acceptance into the Olympic movement, their efforts where successful but high-jacketed by the Delcourt and Espinos camp, it becomes our responsibility to bring the truth before the next generation and to create a new clean structure to get karate unified, developed and presented for a pure and professional acceptance into the future Olympic Games with everyone from ALL karate formats competing just like Judo has managed to achieve.
With the historic signing of the WKF-ITKF Joint Statement led by Hidetaka Nishiyama (Chairman, ITKF) and Mr. Jacques Delcourt President of WUKO.WKF) at a duly constituted meeting in Osaka, Japan in 1996 for the unification of karate into one federation administrating all karate, the JWC (Joint Working Committee) was established with Mr. Kunio Tatsuno as its convener and Mr. Mr. Imtiaz Abdulla (WKF Vice President), Mr. Takaichi Mano (WKF General Secretary), Mr. Rajeev Sinha, ITKF Director) and Mr. J. Michael Crowe (ITKF General Secretary) as JWC Members. This JWC was recognised by the IOC and given the task of unification of world karate.
But there is a question as to why did Karate fail to make it to Olympics despite hard work of JWC who worked unanimously under the principles of 101st session document of the IOC?
Because ITKF was not ready for the dirty tricks of the WUKO European members and the Japanese were supporting the European Agenda, tis started a new partnership between Espinos and Sasagawa to protect their personal interest in karate world-wide. they will do anything to destroy United Karate and this is why the United World Karate Federation was created to stop this agenda and to unite all karate irrespective of origin.
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