Viewers of the “live” cable broadcast of Taiwan’s 26th Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎) held in Taipei on 27 June, were greeted with an unexpected blank screen which said:
“This segment of the programme is not suitable for broadcast. We apologise for the inconvience caused.”
A spokesperson from Starhub confirmed this when TOC wrote to the company, “Yes, a short segment was blocked off as it featured an offensive message.”
So what was being censored for this segment?
The screen went blank when singer Huang Wei-Chieh stepped onto the red carpet with huge banners reading “Today Dapu, Tomorrow the Government (今天拆大埔，明天拆政府). A tagline below the wordings wrote, “Fxxk the government”.
This is a protest to the forced eviction of residents at Dapu, Taiwan.
Huang was nominated in the best Hakka album category.
TOC understands that there is a delay introduced in live broadcast so that broadcasters or the censors can restrict images that are deemed sensitive or offensive.
Viewers in China had it worse for the broadcast of the awards, where the coverage was blocked when the winner in the “song of the year” category was announced.
The winner for the category is Fire EX’s for their song “Island’s Sunrise” (島嶼天光). A song that became the anthem for last year’s Sunflower Movement, which successfully prevented the government from implementing a highly controversial services trade agreement with China.
Video of the censored segment
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