It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
On Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard worked alongside a good samaritan vessel to rescue four fishermen from the fishing vessel Alaska Rose, which had capsized just off Chiniak Island, Alaska.
At about 1630 hours, Coast Guard Sector Anchorage received a mayday call from the crew of the Alaska Rose, who reported that their vessel were taking on water. The sector's watchstanders broadcast a request for assistance from nearby vessels and dispatched a Jayhawk rescue helicopter from Air Station Kodiak.
At about 1656, less than half an hour after the mayday call, the aircrew arrived on scene. Conditions were relatively rough, with waves of eight feet and winds of about 30 knots. The aircrew found that the Alaska Rose had capsized and the crew had gone into the water. One person remained on the hull of the capsized vessel, and they hoisted the survivor aboard and flew back to Air Station Kodiak.
Three other crewmembers were in the water, and a good samaritan vessel - the Kylia - retrieved all three safely and transferred them back to Kodiak. Water temperatures near Kodiak Island currently average about 40 degrees, posing a risk to survival in the event of long-duration immersion.
“I wholeheartedly thank the good Samaritans involved,” said Lt. Madeline Romito, Sector Anchorage command duty officer. “The quick response between them and the helicopter crew played a major role in the positive outcome of this case.”
The Alaska Rose is believed to have gone down after the rescue, according to local KMXT.
Friday, March 15, 2024
EU Ombudsman Calls for Reforms in EU Coast Guard in Wake of 2023 Tragedy
EU Ombudsman calls for changes to the EU Coast Guard operation (file photo)
The European Union’s Ombudsman issued a report critical of the handling of the 2023 migrant boat tragedy in the Mediterranean where more than 600 people are thought to have drowned. It is also questioning more of the fundamental issues related to the operations of the EU’s Border and Coast Guard agency Frontex.
The report finds that the EU’s Border and Coast Guard Agency is unable to fully fulfill its fundamental obligations and is too reliant on member states. It calls on EU legislatures both to investigate the handling of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean and to address the fundamental rights gap for Frontex.
Frontex describes its mission as supporting and coordinating the efforts of member states for border security and cross-border crime. While the agency has extensive resources when it comes to maritime situations, the report highlights Frontex operates in support of member state agencies which must request assistance and can also redirect Frontex. Previous reports have accused individual states of sending Frontex away or refusing its resources while efforts were made to “push back” migrants.
“Frontex includes ‘coast guard’ in its name, but its current mandate and mission clearly fall short of that,” concludes Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly in the recently released report. “If Frontex has a duty to help save lives at sea, but the tools for it are lacking, then this is clearly a matter for EU legislators.”
O’Reilly’s investigation was one of several launched after a migrant boat named Adriana sunk last year. Greece’s Ombudsman and the Greek Naval Court are still investigating the incident but the Hellenic Coast Guard declined an internal review despite accusations that its boat contributed to the sinking and covered up its actions by seizing survivors’ cellphones.
The boat had been identified as a risk by Italian authorities, Frontex, and international aid groups after it left Libya on June 10 overcrowded with approximately 750 people including children. The vessel was in Greece’s region and four days later founderedwith only around 100 people saved. Approximately 80 bodies were recovered.
While looking at the actions of Frontex as they related to the Adriana, the Ombudsman also investigated the agency’s response in other maritime emergencies, its mandate, and its structure. The report concludes that Frontex has no internal guidelines on issuing emergency signals and that there is a failure to ensure fundamental rights monitors are sufficiently involved.
In the case of the Adriana, a Frontex surveillance plane spent 10 minutes over the vessel on June 13 during a standard maritime surveillance patrol. It shared video footage and information about the boat’s conditions and sea state with the Italian and Greek authorities. Frontex highlighted the overcrowding and that no lifejackets were visible, but concluded the boat was not in immediate danger and did not issue a Mayday. Frontex says it believed Greece was handling the situation.
The report acknowledges it is contested if a Mayday should have been issued and if it would have prevented the tragedy. An internal report at Frontex however concluded while the agency complied with its obligations, in the future similar cases should be more thoroughly assessed.
Frontex made four additional offers of assistance on June 13 and 14 to the Greek authorities but received no reply. A second pre-planned surveillance on June 13 was diverted and Frontex did not return to the Adriana until after the vessel was lost. Under the current regulations, Frontex needed Greek permission to go to the location of the Adriana.
“It is not unlikely that there will be a repeat of the Adriana tragedy unless there are significant changes to the legal and operational framework for responding to maritime emergencies,” concludes the Ombudsman. The report observes boats in distress carrying refugees and asylum seekers can not as it now stands rely on proactive SAR operations at the EU level.
The Ombudsman has no legal authority to require changes but writes the incident should cause wider reflections on the changes needed to demonstrate the EU’s commitment to saving lives at sea. A request was made for Frontex to resolve internal issues, while the report calls on the EU to establish an independent commission to assess the reasons for the large number of deaths in the Mediterranean. The report also wants to consider whether Frontex should suspend or terminate activities when a member state has persistent violations of fundamental rights.
The Ombudsman calls on EU legislators to reflect on and address the clear fundamental rights gap in the way the system operates today.
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Investigators To Examine Whether Dirty Fuel Caused Baltimore Bridge Crash
A safety probe into a Baltimore bridge collapse will determine whether contaminated fuel played a part in the accident whereby a giant ship lost power and crashed into the bridge forcing it to collapse.
Early investigations suggest that the Singapore-flagged Dali cargo ship was setting off from the Port of Baltimore to Colombo, Sri Lanka, when it apparently lost power and crashed into a support pillar of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The lights on the Dali, a 948-foot-long container ship capable of carrying 95,000 tonnes of cargo, began to flicker about an hour into the trip, prompting a harbor pilot and assistant to report power issues and a loss of propulsion.
The bridge collapsed on impact and tumbled into the Patapsco River, with the crew managing to send a last-minute mayday call to the police just in time to stop traffic. Emergency responders rescued two people from the water while another six remain missing.
An oil executive has told Fox News there’s some validity to reports that contaminated fuel potentially caused the ship’s engine failure and triggered the accident.
"It's just stealing money, the companies selling them. If nobody's watching closely enough, they'll give them contaminated fuel," United Refining Company CEO John Catsimatidis said in response to a contributor asking how the dirty fuel could get onto the ship.
"Contaminated fuel is being sold to the [New York] schools and sold to the MTA whenthe MTA or the schools are not watching closely enough. You know, you give them 80 percent real fuel and 20 percent garbage. And theFBI should be looking into that," he added.
Supply chain management company Flexport has warned of a vicious feedback loop and supply chain disruptions following the collapse of the Baltimore Bridge.
“It’s not just the port of Baltimore that’s going to be impacted,” Ryan Petersen, the company’s CEO has said. According to Petersen, the port’s closure in Baltimore, Maryland, was just one factor that will contribute to shipping delays.
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
Baltimore's freak bridge collapse reverberates from cars to coal
Nacha Cattan, Heather Perlberg and Brendan Murray, Bloomberg News
The Dali container vessel after it struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge that collapsed into the Patapsco River in Baltimore, on March 26. , Bloomberg
The 1.6 mile-long bridge collapsed in a matter of seconds. The catastrophic consequences are set to stretch out for weeks.
As much as 2.5 million tons of coal, hundreds of cars made by Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co., and lumber and gypsum are threatened with disruption after the container ship Dali slammed into and brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early hours of Tuesday.
Six people were presumed dead after a search in the Patapsco River, officials said Tuesday evening. The toll could have been worse except for a mayday call from the Singaporean-flagged vessel as it lost power.
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said investigators were able to board the Dali Tuesday night to inspect the ship’s bridge, electronics and documentation.
“We do have the data record, which is essentially the ‘black box,’” Homendy said in an interview with CNN. “We’ve sent that back to our lab to evaluate and begin to develop a timeline of events that led up to the strike on the bridge.”
She added that investigators should have information from the vessel’s black box later on Wednesday.
The aftermath of the bridge’s collapse throws another spotlight on the fragile nature of global supply chains that have already been strained by drought in Panama and missile attacks on Red Sea shipping by Yemen-based Houthi militants. Docks in New Jersey and Virginia face the threat of being overwhelmed by traffic that’s being forced away from Baltimore, one of the busiest ports on the U.S. East Coast.
“It’s a large port with a lot of flow through it, so it’s going to have an impact,” John Lawler, Ford’s chief financial officer, told Bloomberg TV. “We’ll work on the workarounds. We’ll have to divert parts to other ports along the East Coast or elsewhere in the country.”
Baltimore only handled about three per cent of all East Coast and Gulf Coast imports in the year through Jan. 31, said S&P Global Market Intelligence. But it’s crucial to cars and light trucks, with European carmakers such as Mercedes-Benz Group AG, Volkswagen AG and BMW operating facilities in and around the port. It’s also the second-largest terminal for U.S. exports of coal, with a shutdown potentially hitting shipments to India.
About a dozen large vessels are stuck inside Baltimore’s harbour as well as a similar number of tug boats, according to IHS Markit and Wood Mackenzie’s Genscape. The list includes cargo ships, automobile carriers and a tanker named the Palanca Rio.
That’s just the impact on the port.
About 35,000 people used the bridge every day. The annual value of goods going over is about US$28 billion, according to the American Trucking Associations.
“We rely on our infrastructure systems for our daily needs, for a huge amount of the goods that we get in the United States from overseas and to have it cut off so suddenly, it’s a huge crisis,” said Yonah Freemark, a researcher at the Urban Institute.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge, named for the man who wrote the text of the Star-Spangled Banner, took five years to build and was completed in 1977. The cost at the time was around $141 million, according to one estimate. A rebuild today is likely to cost “several billion dollars,” said Freemark.
President Joe Biden said he wants the federal government to pay and vowed “to move heaven and earth to reopen the port and rebuild the bridge.”
But Baltimore is in for a lengthy reconstruction. It could be weeks before any port operations resume as officials need to remove bridge debris and the 984-foot Dali from the river.
That’s expected to accelerate a shift of cargo to the U.S. West Coast to avoid bottlenecks from Boston to Miami. A sudden 10 to 20 per cent increase in volumes through a port is enough to cause massive backlogs and congestion, according to Ryan Petersen, the founder and chief executive officer of Flexport Inc., a digital freight platform based in San Francisco.
Trade hub
Traversing Maryland, meanwhile, threatens to create headaches for motorists and truckers. A trip from Edgemere heading south to Glen Burnie was about 15 miles (24 kilometers) over the bridge. It’s 20 miles via the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel. The trip will be even tougher for truckers hauling hazardous materials, which are barred from the tunnel. They’d have to travel 45 miles on the Baltimore Beltway.
The biggest hit though could be to Baltimore itself, a city of close to 600,000 people whose stagnation and high-poverty neighborhoods were made famous by television show The Wire.
The bridge helped connect major parts of Baltimore and was key to its renaissance as a logistics and e-commerce hub after the shuttering of its steel industry. With its deep-water port, shortline railway and well-located interstate highway, the city attracted investors who have been pouring money into redevelopment.
One of the largest projects, Tradepoint Atlantic, has leased millions of square feet in warehouse space to some of the world’s biggest businesses, including Amazon.com Inc. and FedEx Corp.
Facing months of uncertainty, Baltimore and Maryland both declared a state of emergency.
Throughout the morning on Tuesday, crowds gathered in east Baltimore County, camping out in grassy spots or climbing highway guardrails to get a better look of the bridge and snap photos. Across the street from a Dollar General on Dundalk Avenue, residents discussed the roar of the structure collapsing, comparing it to a jet engine during takeoff.
Not far from the collapsed bridge, police changed shifts at the dock of the Hard Yacht Cafe in Dundalk. Officers getting off their boat had been circling the waters as part of the rescue effort for more than 10 hours, they said, adding that divers were searching for remaining victims in the water when they left the scene.
“This is one of the cathedrals of American infrastructure,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “The path to normalcy will not be easy, it will not be quick, it will not be inexpensive, but we will rebuild together.”
After Bridge Tragedy, One Baltimore Cargo Terminal is Still Open
The tragic collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge has put a new spotlight on Tradepoint Atlantic, the logistics complex located on the former Bethlehem Steel site. Unlike Baltimore's inner harbor, Tradepoint is seaward of the bridge's wreckage, and it is one of the few parts of the city's waterfront still open to deep-sea traffic.
In a statement, the terminal's operator said that it was working closely with officials as the emergency response proceeds.
"Tradepoint Atlantic has been in constant contact with emergency response officials and leaders from Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and the State of Maryland and will continue to coordinate during this extremely challenging situation," the company said. "As part of the Port of Baltimore, we are committed to helping our state and local partners and the entire port community recover and rebuild from this tragedy."
Tradepoint is a receiving terminal for ro/ro vessels in the Baltimore area, and this is a core part of the Port of Baltimore's trade. The port vies with Brunswick, Georgia for the title of biggest ro/ro port in America - but the vast car terminals and parking lots on the far side of the bridge are currently inaccessible. Carmakers Volkswagen and BMW, which both have receiving facilities at Tradepoint Atlantic, have both said that their Baltimore operations are unaffected by the bridge collapse.
The site's importance is only set to grow in years to come. Tradepoint is working with MSC and TIL to build a container terminal at Sparrows Point, which would increase Baltimore's capacity to handle containerized cargo by 70 percent. Subject to federal approval for dredging, it could be open as soon as 2027.
In the meantime, multiple seaports up and down the East Coast have said that they stand ready to absorb the extra cargo volume from Baltimore. The additional cargo per port is not expected to rival the peak surge levels seen during the late-pandemic import boom. The Port of Virginia, which is just 125 nautical miles to the south of Baltimore, has been investing heavily in expansion and is expected to pick up a substantial share of the slack.
“I don’t think we’ll have a large impact in terms of logistics and shipping moving forward. There might be snafus over the next couple days while issues are being worked through, but I think they’ll be able to overcome that pretty quickly,” said Brent Howard, president of the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce, speaking to The Hill.
Bill Doyle Comments on Cargo Ship M/V Dali Allision in Port of Baltimore
Special News Feature: Bill Doyle provides insight into the M/V Dali's allision with the Francis Scott Key Bridge. While federal, state and local authorities are on the scene, there is growing speculation about the vessel’s condition and fuel supply.
The 984-foot container ship was transiting the harbor at nine knots when it struck the bridge, and the circumstances of the accident are still under investigation. The ship is owned by Grace Ocean and is registered in Singapore and managed by Synergy Marine.
Six people who were on the bridge are missing and presumed dead. Two others were rescued from the water. Authorities say the eight construction workers were repairing potholes on the bridge. There were 22 Indian nationals and two local pilots aboard the cargo ship.
Multiple Vessels Trapped in Baltimore, Including Sealift Ships
Fast Sealift Ships SS Denebola and SS Antares, Baltimore, 2013 (EllenM1 / CC BY)
As federal and local authorities focus on the emergency response to the collapse of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, Port of Baltimore's inner harbor remains cut off from the rest of the world. No vessels can get in to deliver Baltimore's core cargoes - containers, cars, gypsum and sugar - and no vessels can get out.
The latter fact will be of particular interest for shipowners who have vessels inside the harbor. These include one car carrier, the Swedish-flagged Carmen; four bulkers, the Klara Oldendorff, Balsa 94, Saimaagracht and JY River; and four laid-up ships belonging to the Maritime Administration's Ready Reserve (RRF), the Cape Washington, Gary I. Gordon, SS Antares and SS Denebola.
The Biden administration has restoration of the navigation channel at the top of its list of priorities, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said Wednesday.
"We can't wait for the bridge work to be complete to see that channel reopened. There are vessels that are stuck inside right now and there's an enormous amount of traffic that goes through there. That's really important to the entire economy," he told NPR in an interview.
The closure's effect on four RRF vessels could have potential implications for emergency sealift preparedness. The RRF's vessels are kept in reduced operating status at multiple sites around the nation, and the shutdown of any one port would not affect the service's ability to mobilize transport options for most overseas contingencies.
However, two of the vessels in Baltimore are high-value assets - the steamships SS Antares and SS Denebola. These are two out of eight Fast Sealift Ships - a class of SeaLand boxships that were converted for military ro/ro service in the 1980s. They are among the fastest cargo ships in operation today, and their peak speed tops out at 33 knots.
The eight FSS vessels have delivered goods for every major U.S. conflict since the First Gulf War; however, these powerful steamships are 50 years old, and each ship's ability to get under way is not known. The RRF has acknowledged issues with its aging tonnage, and commercially-obsolete steam plants are particularly challenging for MARAD to man and maintain.
Old Lessons May Haunt Baltimore Bridge Tragedy
Two standards for bridge protection: the missing span of the old Sunshine Skyway Bridge, left, and the new span with dolphins, right (Apelbaum / CC BY)
For observers who have been in shipping long enough, Wednesday's disastrous bridge collapse in Baltimore brought to mind lessons learned in 1980, when the freighter Summit Venture struck and destroyed half of Tampa's Sunshine Skyway bridge. 35 people died in that disaster, prompting a decade-long rethink of highway bridge design. The Skyway Bridge was rebuilt with a fortress of protective concrete dolphins - but it is unclear whether Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge was updated to meet a similar standard before it was hit by the boxship Dali on Wednesday morning.
Baltimore's Key Bridge opened in 1977, three years before the Skyway Bridge disaster (and two years after a similar casualty in Tasmania). Based on visual evidence, the Key Bridge had one small dolphin on each side of the central span's piers, intended either for scour protection or for defending against allisions. When the container ship Dali approached early Wednesday morning, the vessel appeared to pass by the dolphin and strike the pier directly with her starboard bow.
“Maybe [the dolphin] would stop a ferry or something like that,” consulting engineer Donald Dusenberry told the New York Times. “Not a massive, oceangoing cargo ship.”
Tampa-area attorney Steven Yerrid was involved in the response to the Skyway Bridge disaster in 1980, and he told local media that when he saw the fendering system on the Key Bridge, it looked all too familiar. "I felt not only shock, but extreme sadness, because I knew other people had to unnecessarily lose their lives to learn a lesson that was taught 44 years ago," Yarrid told Tampa's Fox 13.
The Skyway Bridge's lessons were written down and codified by AASHTO, America's highway standards body, in 1991. The rules laid out protection requirements for newly-built bridges and guidance for retrofitting old structures. Risks still remained: in 2002, a barge tow hit a pier on the I-40 bridge in Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, destroying the span and killing 14 people. Only the upstream side of the I-40 bridge had structures to protect it from barge traffic - but the casualty vessel approached from the other direction.
For many engineers, the fact that a landmark structure like the Key Bridge could still be felled by marine traffic is a call to action. "As a matter of principle, when there is a bridge pier in a shipping channel we should expect the bridge to be strong enough to withstand impact or to be protected from impact," structural engineer Shankar Nair told the Baltimore Banner.
"Yes, it could be raised whether it should have been better protected," Cot says. "There has been a historical interest in making fender systems a lot more robust, such that if you have these types of allisions - which are bound to happen - that they do not damage the bridge structure itself. I do think that those representing the vessel interest would probably raise that."
FORGOTTEN HEROES OF THE ROAD 'MAYDAY': The largest organization of independent truck drivers is demanding that Trump provide masks, testing, and quarantine zones for truckers
Truckers are asking President Donald Trump for "urgent and immediate action."
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File ASSHOLE BEHIND THE WHEEL
America's largest organization of independent truck drivers is demanding that President Donald Trump act quickly to protect drivers.
There are nearly two million truck drivers in the US, and they have been deemed as "essential" workers while much of the nation has been told to stay home.
Truckers are at an increased risk for contracting the coronavirus.
In a letter that begins "HELP – MAYDAY – 9-1-1," America's largest organization of independent truck drivers is demanding that President Donald Trump act quickly to protect drivers.
Todd Spencer, the president and CEO of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, wrote in a letter dated April 3 that truck drivers are key to the nation's supply chain and have been deemed "essential" workers, but they're at more risk than ever as the coronavirus sweeps across the US.
"Right now, professional drivers are busting their butts to care for the nation," he wrote in the letter to Trump. "Their hard work and personal sacrifice should not include their health or even their lives if at all possible or preventable."
There are nearly two million truck drivers in the US, and they move around 71% of the nation's freight by weight. If truck drivers got sick en masse, that would put at risk Americans' abilities to buy groceries, go to the ATM, get gas, and, of course, get online orders delivered.
Spencer argued that this critical service could be at risk. "Once word spreads that drivers are testing positive, we could very well see a tremendous reduction in drivers willing to risk everything for the rest of us," he wrote.
Here are the three safeguards Spencer wrote that Trump needs to make available to truck drivers immediately: Access to personal protective equipment, like masksTesting on truck routes that show results within hoursA place for truck drivers to quarantine or seek treatment if they test positive for the coronavirus
The massive trucking companies that employ drivers have not made clear if they have paid time off for truck drivers, or what infrastructure they have for drivers who have the coronavirus. Business Insider contacted 10 of the largest public trucking companies in the US, and few revealed policies for what happens if a truck driver gets sick.
One large public trucking company is even asking truck drivers with symptoms of the coronavirus to self-quarantine in their trucks for several days, according to emails sent to Business Insider.
A truck driver in Luling, Texas in 2015. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
As Americans buy more and more cleaning goods and food, and hospitals require quick shipments of key medical supplies, the country's trucking network is getting pushed to the limit to ensure those items are delivered on time, experts say. During the week of March 22, for instance, trucking shipments to grocery stores jumped by 81% compared to the same week last year, and by 16% from just the week before, according to freight data company project44.
Meanwhile, truck drivers are at a greater risk than other Americans to get the coronavirus and to experience complications from it.
Truck drivers are twice as likely as the average working American to not have health insurance, according to a 2014 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Paid sick leave is also not a common benefit across many trucking jobs.
More than half of truckers smoke cigarettes, according to the CDC. Epidemiologist Saskia Popescu, who practices at the Honor Health medical group in Arizona, previously told Business Insider that those with a history of smoking may be more vulnerable to coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the American Diabetes Association has warned that people with diabetes should expect more complications with coronavirus should they contract it. Truckers are twice as likely as the general population to have diabetes, according to the CDC.
Read more about how coronavirus is affecting America's 1.8 million truck drivers
Dozens of Taiwanese celebrities endorse Beijing's claim on island
More than 70 repost a state media comment about 'unification' between Taiwan and China.
By Hsia Hsiao-hwa for RFA Mandarin, Alice Yam for RFA Cantonese 2024.05.27
Taiwanese celebrities from left to right: journalist Patty Hou, singer and actress Nana Ouyang, TV host and actress Dee Hsu are pictured in this combination of file photos. (Photos by AFP and AP)
Photo: RFA
Dozens of artists and actors from Taiwan have been lining up on social media to endorse Beijing's territorial claim on the island by retweeting a Chinese state media post in support of eventual "unification."
More than 70 artists and celebrities including journalist Patty Hou, singer and actress Nana Ouyang and TV host and actress Dee Hsu reposted a statement from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on the Weibo social media platform which said that independence for Taiwan, which has never been ruled by Beijing, was "a dead end."
"The unification of Taiwan with China cannot be stopped," said the May 22 statement, local media reported, citing a social media spreadsheet.
CCTV's post was in response to the inauguration speech of Taiwan's elected President Lai Ching-te, who called on Beijing to stop threatening his country, and respect the will of its 23 million people, the majority of whom have no wish to be ruled by the Chinese Communist Party.
"Taiwan has never been a country and will never become one,” the post said, adding “Taiwanese independence is a dead end. Unification with the motherland is unstoppable! China will eventually achieve complete unification.”
Lead singer Ashin of the Taiwanese band Mayday told fans at a concert at Beijing's Bird's Nest stadium on Saturday that "We Chinese, when we come to Beijing, must eat roast duck! What else should we eat?" in a statement similar to the saying, "When in Rome."
And singer Jolin Tsai, who has had an LGBTQ+-themed song deleted from her concerts by Chinese censors, told concert-goers that residents of "our Chinese city of Nanchang" were the most passionate fans.
Ashin of Taiwanese band Mayday performs in Kuala Lumpur in 2013. (Lai Seng Sin/AP)
One fan commented on Nana Ouyang's re-post that they were unhappy about her support for Beijing.
"I’ve been your fan for a long time, but I love Taiwan more," the fan wrote in comments reported by the Taiwan News. Another told Ouyang to go live in China: "Don't come back to Taiwan."
Some Hong Kong artists also followed suit, including martial arts star Donnie Yen, who sparked controversy when he was a presenter at last year’s Oscars despite protests over his pro-Beijing stance on the Hong Kong protests of 2019.
Resisting pressure
Not everyone piled onto the bandwagon, however.
Taiwanese actor Yang Hsiu-hui told reporters on Sunday that she identifies as Taiwanese, and doesn't want to make money from China.
"Some people told me I would lose access to the market in mainland China," Yang said, adding that she had turned down jobs in China for political reasons.
"I gave up on that market a long time ago," she said.
Taiwanese singer Jolin Tsai is pictured in Milan in 2017. (Marco Bertolrello/AFP)
President Lai expressed empathy for the artists in a statement on Sunday, saying he could understand how much pressure they were under "in another person's house," and that they may privately feel very differently.
Ruling Democratic Progressive Party Mayor of Kaohsiung Chen Chi-mai said China should honor freedom of speech rather than coercing Taiwanese entertainers into taking a political stance, while the Kuomintang, the largest party in Taiwan's parliament, said putting pressure on Taiwan's artist doesn't "build goodwill across the Taiwan Strait," local media reported.
The island's Ministry of Culture said the artists were forced into taking a position by "unavoidable circumstances," and that such coercion would never happen in democratic Taiwan.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te wears a hat given to him by Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, in Taipei on May 27, 2024. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)
"To the artists taking a public stance under unavoidable circumstances, we extend our understanding," the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. "Taiwan ... will never ask anyone to take a public stance, nor will anyone be punished for taking, or not taking, such a stance."
"The lack of political coercion is the most valuable thing about a free Taiwan," the ministry said.
‘Divide and conquer’
Chinese dissident Gong Yujian, who now lives permanently in Taiwan, told RFA Mandarin that the artists' statements are part of a campaign to wage "cognitive warfare" on Taiwan.
"I am certain, and can say without hesitation, that this is a case of the Chinese Communist Party's divide-and-rule tactics and cognitive warfare being waged against Taiwan," Gong said.
"The aim is to split supporters of independence, with the ultimate aim of benefiting the Chinese Communist Party and its 'fifth column' in Taiwan," he said.
Kang Kai, chairman of the Taiwan Performing Arts Union, told RFA that he had no problem with President Lai's approach.
"Everyone has their own opinion," Kang said. "The most important thing is that they work hard to support their families and do a good job."
"I don't like to see artists getting involved in politics. Neither side wants a war," he said.
Chinese dissident Gong Yujian poses for a photo in New Taipei City in 2015. (Pichi Chuang/Reuters)
A spokesperson for a foundation run by former Kuomintang President Ma Ying-jeou, who recently met with Chinese President Xi Jinping on a trip to Beijing, told RFA Mandarin that "bullying" can work both ways.
"It seems that you are expected to say you're Taiwanese and not Chinese, if you want to be respected ... in Taiwan," Ma Ying-jeou Foundation CEO Hsiao Hsu-tsen said. "That's just another form of suppression and coercion."
But Taipei Mayor Chiang Wanan said there would be no repercussions for the Taiwanese artists who supported Beijing's claim on the island.
"We are a free and democratic country, and Taipei is a diverse and open city, so how can we stop them from performing?" Chiang said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.