Leading up to Human Rights Day on December 10 and the scheduled release of the most important political prisoner from Inner Mongolia, the book dealer Hada, China has increased the pressure on Mongolian human rights activists considerably: dissidents are being arrested, Internet pages blocked and security measures fortified. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) made an urgent appeal to the Chinese government to release Hada, symbol of the Mongolian minority, on 10 December 2010, at the end of his 15 year prison sentence.

"If Hada is held longer, contrary to law, there will be massive protests and unrest in Inner Mongolia," warned Ulrich Delius, head of the STP's Asia section, on Friday in Göttingen. The 54-year-old book dealer and publisher was arrested on Human Rights Day in 1995 for publishing and distributing books about the destruction of Mongolian culture by China. Possible unrest could also endanger the extraction of resources important for industry, so-called "rare earths."

Ninety-seven percent of the world's reserves of rare earths are within the autonomous region, along with coal, gold and other mineral reserves. The fight concerning China's export controls for the 17 sought-after metals known as rare earths has caused great concern in industry and governments around the world, all of them worried about their supplies of these raw materials.

Dissident author Govruud Huuchinhuu was arrested on November 11, 2010, in the city of Tongliao in southeast Inner Mongolia and later placed under house arrest. The author had announced in her blog that she wanted to greet Hada on his release from the prison in Chifeng. On September 28, 2010, officials prevented Mongolian attorney Huhbulag, who has defended many Mongolian civil rights activists, from leaving the country to visit neighboring Mongolia, "for security reasons." In the past months, furthermore, the three most important Internet pages of Mongolian human rights activists were blocked by government officials. Since January 2010 China has massively increased security measures in the "autonomous region" and, according to their own information, invested more than 45 million euros to hire 21,300 new security agents. In addition, 367 sentences have been imposed for "endangering public safety."

The roughly 5.8 million Mongolians in Inner Mongolia were systematically "sinicized" throughout the 20th century. As millions of Han Chinese moved into the area, the Mongolians became a minority in their own region. Today they make up only 20 percent of the population. The forced settlement of hundreds of thousands of Mongolian nomads is widely criticized by Mongolians.

Translated by Elizabeth Crawford