The northern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia may be on course to become the next Xinjiang, where re-education and concentration camps have been set up, more than two weeks into a new school year seen as aiming to erode ethnic Mongolian culture.

Over 1,000 people had been arrested since mass protests broke out against the Chinese government’s new education policy to replace the native Mongolian language with Mandarin in the teaching of some subjects, according to the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center. The detainees included dissidents, writers, chieftains of native herdsmen, and parents who refused to let their children go to school, the center said.

The crackdown had turned Inner Mongolia into a police state, it said.

The new policy, which took effect on Sept. 1, requires primary and secondary schools to switch their medium of instruction to Mandarin, the language of the Han Chinese, for subjects including music, which is at the core of Mongolian culture. Ten of thousands of ethnic Mongolians took part in demonstrations and school boycotts, prompting authorities to impose tightened measures in an attempt to bring the unrest under control.

A senior secondary student was expelled from school in Xilinhot for playing truant, according to a notice sent by the school to the education authorities. The school claimed that the student had voluntarily given up the school place and would not be allowed to re-enroll in the future.

The government on Monday issued notifications mandating specific attendance rates at each school, said Kheried Khuvisgalt, a Japan-based ethnic Mongolian scholar. He told Apple Daily that special police were even deployed to the grasslands, where native herder communities lived, to make parents send their children to school.

Parents who refused to comply would be compelled to undergo “legal education training” just like in Xinjiang, the scholar said. He voiced worries that Inner Mongolia would follow the way of Xinjiang, with re-education and concentration camps established to rein in ethnic minorities and reform their attitudes.

The human rights center said that since the new language policy was introduced, at least nine suicides had been recorded which were tied to the change, including a school principal who jumped from a height a few days ago.

On Tuesday, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Mongolian Foreign Minister Nyamtseren Enkhtaivan in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, a neighbouring country. The two ministers vowed to advance bilateral cooperation in fighting the COVID-19 epidemic and to promote ties between the two countries.

More than 100 people rallied against Wang’s visit to protest the Chinese authorities' suppression of language and culture in Inner Mongolia. They chanted slogans such as “Protect our native language” and “Wang Yi, go away.”

Both Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang are autonomous regions of China.

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