Suppression of the Mongolian language and culture

The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) calls on German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock to – in the course of the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the human rights situation in China (January 23, 2024) – take a clear stance against the destruction of the Uyghur language: “In Geneva, Germany and the EU will have to emphasize that they will not accept the destruction of the Mongolian language by the Chinese colonial power in Inner Mongolia,” stated Hanno Schedler, STP expert on genocide prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, in Göttingen on Tuesday.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) had supported bilingualism in the region of Inner Mongolia for quite a while. Since 2020, however, there have been systematic attempts to suppress the Mongolian language. Meanwhile, kindergartens in the region only teach in Mandarin. Even in schools, fewer and fewer subjects are taught in Mongolian. “Just like in Tibet and Xinjiang, the Chinese government is trying to forcefully prevent the younger generations from learning the language of their parents and grandparents,” Schedler explained. “Under the official guise of ‘bilingualism’, the colonial rulers of the CPC are enforcing monolingualism. If Xi Jinping has his way, Mandarin will become the only language in the multi-ethnic state of China – and Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur, and Kazakh will have no place in his empire anymore.” Meanwhile, only 17 percent of the people in the Inner Mongolia region, which the Mongols call Southern Mongolia, are ethnic Mongols – as Han Chinese were systematically encouraged to move to the region for decades.
Further, there are more and more attempts to ban Mongolian-language books on the history and culture in the region. The authorities are also trying to intimidate parents who dared to protest against measures to gradually ban the Mongolian language from in schools. Some of them were even forced to flee abroad, for example to Mongolia. “Even there, however, they are persecuted by the Chinese state. Chinese police officers are intimidating them by means of phone calls and text messages, and by putting pressure on family members who are still living in Inner Mongolia. The German Federal Government should clearly condemn this transnational repression – in the scope of bilateral meetings, but also on the level of the United Nations,” Schedler added.
Further, the German Federal Government should advocate for Mongol prisoners such as the 28-year-old Alamusha. In 2013, the art student was arbitrarily sentenced to 15 years in prison, allegedly for initiating a fight. Alamusha is kept detained in Prison 3 in Hohhot, the capital city of Inner Mongolia. Since he became a Christian while in prison, he has been suffering from systematic torture by the authorities, also involving the infamous “tiger chair”.