diff --git a/oci/private/tarball.sh.tpl b/oci/private/tarball.sh.tpl
index 122fbf6a..365d49a3 100644
--- a/oci/private/tarball.sh.tpl
+++ b/oci/private/tarball.sh.tpl
@@ -18,7 +18,6 @@ cp_f_with_mkdir() {
 }
 
 MANIFEST_DIGEST=$(${YQ} eval '.manifests[0].digest | sub(":"; "/")' "${INDEX_FILE}" | tr  -d '"')
-REPOTAGS=($(cat "${TAGS_FILE}"))
 
 MANIFESTS_LENGTH=$("${YQ}" eval '.manifests | length' "${INDEX_FILE}")
 if [[ "${MANIFESTS_LENGTH}" != 1 ]]; then
@@ -73,6 +72,7 @@ if [[ "${FORMAT}" == "oci" ]]; then
   # Fill in repo tags as per https://github.com/opencontainers/image-spec/issues/796
   # If there's more than one repo tag, we need to duplicate the manifest entry, so we have one copy per repo tag.
   MANIFEST_COPIES=".manifests"
+  REPOTAGS=($(cat "${TAGS_FILE}"))
   if [[ "${#REPOTAGS[@]}" -gt 1 ]]; then
     for i in $(seq 2 "${#REPOTAGS[@]}"); do
       MANIFEST_COPIES="${MANIFEST_COPIES} + .manifests"
@@ -130,11 +130,15 @@ for LAYER in $(${YQ} ".[]" <<< $LAYERS); do
   cp_f_with_mkdir "${IMAGE_DIR}/blobs/${LAYER}" "${BLOBS_DIR}/${LAYER}.tar.gz"
 done
 
-repo_tags="${REPOTAGS[@]}" \
+# Replace newlines (unix or windows line endings) with % character.
+# We can't pass newlines to yq due to https://github.com/mikefarah/yq/issues/1430 and
+# we can't update YQ at the moment because structure_test depends on a specific version:
+# see https://github.com/bazel-contrib/rules_oci/issues/212
+repo_tags="$(tr -d '\r' < "${TAGS_FILE}" | tr '\n' '%')" \
 config="blobs/${CONFIG_DIGEST}" \
 layers="${LAYERS}" \
 "${YQ}" eval \
-        --null-input '.[0] = {"Config": env(config), "RepoTags": "${repo_tags}" | envsubst | split(" ") | map(select(. != "")) , "Layers": env(layers) | map( "blobs/" + . + ".tar.gz") }' \
+        --null-input '.[0] = {"Config": env(config), "RepoTags": "${repo_tags}" | envsubst | split("%") | map(select(. != "")) , "Layers": env(layers) | map( "blobs/" + . + ".tar.gz") }' \
         --output-format json > "${STAGING_DIR}/manifest.json"
 
 # TODO: https://github.com/bazel-contrib/rules_oci/issues/217