In this Sept. 10, 2020 photo, policemen stand guard outside a school in Tongliao, in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region, following protests over a new bilingual education policy implemented by the Chinese government. (Photo: Noel Celis/AFP)
A rights group has accused China’s communist regime of continuing a “cultural genocide” with an attempt to replace ethnic Mongolian language-based education with Mandarin Chinese in Inner Mongolia province.
In a statement on April 11, the US-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Center said it deplores Chinese authorities’ order asking schools in the province to introduce Mandarin-medium teaching and stop Mongolian-based classes from September.
The group said it has obtained a 52-minute audio recording of the principal of 30th Middle School in the provincial capital Huhhot during a parents-teachers meeting. The recording reveals the principal informing parents about the decision
“Under the directive from the Central Government, all Mongolian schools across the region will use the national common language [Chinese] as the language of instruction starting September 1 this year,” the principal said.
He further added that “the same policy will take effect in the 30th Middle School starting May 1 this year.”
The group also pointed out that a written notice was issued to Mongolian parents stating that the Mongolian entrance exams will be conducted exclusively in Chinese in 2025 for high school students, and in 2028 for college students.
The group alleged that the complete ban on the Mongolian language in Southern Mongolia was “well planned and systematic” and “was the finishing touch of China’s long-running cultural genocide project.”
The Chinese Communist Party-led regime in 2020 tried to impose a “Second Generation Bilingual Education” policy on the roughly six million people in Inner Mongolia, also known as Southern Mongolia to “Firmly Inculcate the Chinese Nationality Common Identity.”
The move had drawn widespread protests in the region from August to September 2020 with more than 300,000 Mongolian students taking to the streets.
Reportedly, millions of parents and teachers staged a sweeping school boycott, rejecting the removal of the Mongolian language from the region’s educational system.
The Chinese authorities had initially claimed that the language change from Mandarin to Chinese would affect only three subjects -- literature, history, and politics.
The Chinese regime reportedly used the mass protests to outlaw Mongolian language education, publicly announcing that the “education in minority languages as local legislations stipulated is unconstitutional” at the Chinese National Congress, according to China’s state-run People’s Daily newspaper.
Following the decision of the national congress the local authorities mobilized and banned learning Mongolian outside campuses.
On Jan. 9, 2021, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Department of Education issued a document that effectively banned “any school from gathering students to offer extracurricular learning courses or teaching new courses,” the group said.
The group fears that the recently emerged audio has given a clear indication that there will be a blanket ban aimed at completely erasing the Mongolian language from the hearts and minds of the people.
In 2022, Enghebatu Togochog, the rights group’s director, testified before the United State Congressional-Executive Commission on China about China’s forced cultural suppression and conversion of Mongolians, Uyghurs, and Tibetans.
He accused China of conducting a barrage of rights violations which include “genocide, ethnic cleansing, political purge, economic exploitation, cultural eradication, linguistic assimilation, social marginalization, resource extraction, and environmental destruction,” in the region.
He told the committee that as part of the 2020 revolt against the language change an estimated 8,000–10,000 Southern Mongolians have been arrested, detained, jailed, and placed under house arrest.
Togochog also alleged that in January 2021 all government mouthpieces, including the Inner Mongolia Radio and Television Mongolian language services, were ordered to start replacing Mongolian cultural programs with Chinese ones.
In his address to the US congressional body, he highlighted the suppression of Mongolian traditional rituals and cultures and the demolition or defacement of Mongolian historical figures.
“Whatever form the campaign may take, the ultimate goal of the Chinese authorities is the same: wipe out the language, culture, and identity of these three peoples and force them to adopt the so-called 'zhong hua,' or, simply put, 'Chinese nationality,'” Togochog said.
