A large-scale civil disobedience movement has broken out in Inner Mongolia, with tens of thousands of students and parents launching widespread strikes and protest rallies.
The people of Inner Mongolia have risen up en masse to resist the outrageous and tyrannical attempts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to extinguish the Mongolian language in schools, a move that began with the forceful implementation of Chinese language teaching in the new school year.
This uprising is causing panic in the ranks of the CCP and leading them to further suppression tactics. However, the people of Inner Mongolia are not afraid of suppression, and more people are participating in this large-scale protest. In addition to more than 300 signatures from the two local official media, there were more than 16,000 petitions and 2,600 objections written by students.
Mongolian authorities under the instruction of the CCP suddenly demanded that primary and secondary schools use Chinese and begin the eradication of the teaching of the Mongolian language in the new semester, causing consternation in the local people who immediately took to the streets in protest.
The government characterized the protest as “incited by foreign forces.” The police were determined to arrest the protesters. They released the photographs of more than a hundred protesters on the Internet ordering them to turn themselves in for arrest without delay and to “face justice.”
The people of Inner Mongolia are not afraid of the CCP
However, the people of Inner Mongolia are not deterred and they are not afraid of the aggressor. Instead, they continue to resist and hold their ground. Official TV and radio employees signed a statement indicating that they would rather lose their careers than accept bilingual education for their children that emphasizes the Han ethnic majority over their own Mongolian ethnicity.
Hong Kong media Apple Daily reported that the Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center stated that even in the face of government pressure and police intimidation, more and more people of Inner Mongolia participated in this protest movement that spanned the entire autonomous region. More than 300 local official media staff collectively signed a petition refusing to introduce “bilingual teaching.”
In addition, the Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center also uploaded a video, indicating that there were more than 16,000 petitions and 2,600 objections written by students.
Cause of the protests and consternation
The Ministry of Education of Inner Mongolia brazenly issued a new policy on August 26 requiring local primary schools that teach in Mongolian to switch to the Chinese textbooks compiled by the Ministry of Education for primary and secondary schools from September 1 and to gradually start with the first grade for the next two years.
The political class and history class are to be replaced by unified textbooks and Mandarin Chinese. The Mongolians also discovered that the new Mongolian school textbooks have deleted fragments of nationalist poems about the Mongolians’ love of their homeland, culture, and mother tongue, and added Chinese characters instead.
The incident caused a huge controversy in the local communities. Many places in Inner Mongolia have held ongoing rallies of protest for days. Parents refused to send their children to school.
A video broadcast on the Internet shows that recently in Zalut Banner, Tongliao, Inner Mongolia, some parents of students refused to take their children to Mongolian language school in order to express their protest at the eradication of their culture. Other parents wanted to take their children home after hearing the news that the school would begin teaching Chinese, but the school would not release the children.
The Urad Middle Banner of Inner Mongolia issued an “emergency notice” for all towns and villages, requiring Mongolian civil servants to take their children to school before the evening of September 2 or be expelled if they did not enter the register before noon on the 3rd.
The public security bureaus in all districts of Tongliao City, Inner Mongolia, have issued “Announcements on Co-investigations” on the Internet, wanting to find some people accused of “inciting and provoking trouble” outside the school. As of September 3, the number of people involved has reached 129.
On September 4, the Public Security Bureau of Balinzuo Banner, Inner Mongolia, issued a notice stating that the bureau had cracked down on an individual who “disturbed the order of teaching” and imposed administrative detention on them for 5 days.
According to reports, the CCP issued a special urgent notice to local Party members, requesting the Party secretary or leaders of all neighborhoods to tell public officials to send their children back to school before 5:30 p.m. on September 2, otherwise, they will be reprimanded. By September 3, those who failed to enroll would be transferred for processing or even get expelled.
Translated by Joseph Wu and edited by Michael Segarty
