Ethnic Mongolians have been
protesting for six days over the death this month of a Mongolian herder,
Mergen, after being struck by a coal truck. The government announced the arrest
of two Han Chinese for homicide, but that failed to stem the anger.
Hundreds of paramilitary
policemen and police in riot gear, armed with shields, batons and helmets,
patrolled Hohhot’s Xinhua Square, next to the Inner Mongolia radio and
television station, after calls spread online for a protest on Monday.
Police also surrounded
Ruyi Square, in front of the local government building, but elsewhere life went
on as usual.
Chinese authorities sealed
off parts of the northern region of Inner Mongolia, a resource-rich region
strategically located on the borders of Russia and Mongolia, on Friday in what
residents described as martial law.
In a rare sign of
defiance, hundreds of China’s Mongolians, who make up less than 20 percent of
the roughly 24 million population of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region,
have taken to the streets in other parts of the province.
Resentment against Han
Chinese runs deep.
Inner Mongolia, which
covers more than a 10th of China’s land mass, is supposed to offer a high
degree of self-rule, but Mongolians say the Han Chinese majority run the show
and have been the main beneficiaries of economic development.
China’s Mongolians rarely
take to the streets, unlike Tibetans or Xinjiang’s Uighurs, making the latest
protests highly unusual.
The New York-based
Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center said Mongolians were planning
further protests over the next few days, including in Hohhot, less than an
hour’s flight from Beijing.
Some schools in Hohhot
said authorities had stepped up security.
“The school has told us to
keep an eye for any illegal gathering these days as June 4 is coming,” one man
in a high school in Hohhot told Reuters, referring to the armed crackdown on
pro-democracy protesters on June 4, 1989, in Beijing.
“Security is tight, there
are many policemen in the streets,” he added. He declined to give his name.
A worker at a university
in Hohhot said three entrances had been sealed off and there was a heavy police
presence. He declined to comment on the reason. Telephone calls to the Hohhot
government and its propaganda department went unanswered. Police in Hohhot later
detained a Reuters reporter and questioned him on why he had come to the city.
A government official then
told another Reuters reporter that foreign journalists needed to apply three
days in advance if they wished to report in the city. “Everything is stable in
Hohhot, it is very safe here,” said the official.
In the ruling party’s
first response to the protests, Inner Mongolia’s Communist Party chief Hu
Chunhua told students and teachers on Friday he was representing the government
to seek their views on the situation. He said “public anger has been immense,”
state media reported.
“Please be assured,
teachers and students, that the suspects ... will be punished severely and
quickly, so that the... rights of victims and their families can be resolutely safeguarded,”
the Inner Mongolian Daily cited Hu as saying.
But Hu’s reassurances are
unlikely to bring lasting calm, said Enghebatu Togochog of the Southern
Mongolian Human Rights Information Center.
“The conflict between the
Chinese authorities’ attempts to exploit the natural resources and the
disrespect of the Mongolians’ way of life will not be easily resolved, unless
the Chinese government changes its policy,” he said.