Qualla: Min Ping Yu No. 5540 Incident

Min Ping Yu No. 5540 Incident: Introduction

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the night of July 21, 1990, a fishing boat called Min Ping Yu No. 5540 crossed the Taiwan Strait under Taiwanese military escort, carrying 76 people from Fujian province who had entered Taiwan without authorization and were being sent back. The Taiwan Garrison Command had ordered that all of them be confined in the vessel's sealed holds for the duration of the journey, to prevent anyone from forcing the boat to turn around. By the morning of July 22, twenty-five of those people were dead. They had suffocated in the dark.

Min Ping Yu No. 5540 Incident: Who These People Were

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The men and women aboard Min Ping Yu No. 5540 had crossed the strait looking for work and a better life. In the years after Taiwan lifted martial law in 1987, movement across the strait became easier in some respects and the flow of people from Fujian — geographically close, hist...

Min Ping Yu No. 5540 Incident: What Happened in the Hold

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Taiwan Garrison Command's standing procedure was to seal deportees into the holds for the crossing, escorted by Taiwanese military vessels. On Min Ping Yu No. 5540, twenty-seven people were reportedly confined in a single cabin approximately one meter high and three meters wi...

Min Ping Yu No. 5540 Incident: Accountability and the Kinmen Agreement

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The incident created enormous pressure on both sides of the strait to acknowledge what had happened and establish some form of process to prevent it from happening again. The ROC government had adhered to the Three Noes policy — no contact, no negotiation, no compromise with the ...

Min Ping Yu No. 5540 Incident: Memory and Reckoning

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Min Ping Yu No. 5540 incident is not widely taught or commemorated. It falls into the difficult category of events that neither side of the strait has found it straightforward to memorialize: the deaths occurred under the authority of the Taiwan Garrison Command, an instituti...