Human Rights in China

by Tsogt

Human Rights in China - in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region

Authorities in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) continued in the past year to restrict independent expressions of ethnic identity among Mongols and to interfere with traditional livelihoods, while enforcing campaigns to promote stability and ethnic unity.

In a December 2009 interview, the head of the IMAR Public Security Department likened the region's public security situation to that in the autonomous Tibetan areas of China and Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, stating "enemy forces" from Western countries aimed to split the region.

In September 2009, the IMAR Department of Education issued a detailed plan for strengthening ethnic unity education in IMAR schools. Authorities strengthened “ecological migration” policies that have required herders to resettle from pasture land and abandon traditional livelihoods, while outside observers and some domestic scholars have questioned the effectiveness of these government policies in ameliorating environmental degradation.

Human rights in China - Mongols continued to face the risk of repercussions for peacefully defending their rights or aiming to preserve their culture. In a case also illustrating China's influence outside its borders and contravention of protections for asylum seekers, on October 3, 2009, Chinese security officials inside the country of Mongolia reportedly joined Mongolian security officials in detaining Batzangaa, an ethnic Mongol from China.


The detention occurred outside the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office in Ulaanbaatar, where Batzangaa had applied for refugee status. Authorities returned him to China and held him in detention. Batzangaa ran a traditional Mongolian medicine school in Ordos municipality, IMAR, that reportedly had come under official scrutiny for its popularity and activities with Mongols and Tibetans, and he was also involved in a land dispute with local authorities.

On April 18, 2010, officials at the Beijing Capital International Airport detained rights advocate Sodmongol as he was waiting to board a flight to the United States to attend the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Sodmongol had organized events and led two Web sites--now shut down--that promoted the protection of Mongols' rights. His current whereabouts remain unknown.

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