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Inner Mongolia police get tough on protests against Chinese-oriented education

蘋果日報 2020/09/19 21:13


Armored personnel carriers and other security squads are out in force on the urban streets of Inner Mongolia, a northern Chinese province, to crack down on mass protests against a bilingual education policy rolled out in the new school term this month.
Authorities said the protesters were incited by foreign forces.
The crackdown was imposed as public anger built up over the diminished role of the Mongolian language in favour of Mandarin as the main medium of instruction. Crowds marched in opposition and parents and their children boycotted classes. A number of physical clashes broke out between parents and police officers.
Most schools and classrooms sat empty, according to videos taken in various cities and circulated online. Radio Free Asia reported that police from the prefecture-level Ulanhot of Hinggan League chased after students and forced them to go to school.
Communication between parents and teachers via the phone or China’s Twitter-like platform WeChat was cut off. WeChat groups carrying titles in the Mongolian language also ceased to function.
The newly introduced language policy aims to gradually lessen the heavy use of the Mongolian language in primary and secondary schools and to replace it with Mandarin, the language of the Han Chinese.
To that end, authorities no longer provide first-grade classes in the Mongolian language. New editions of Mongolian-language textbooks now carry Chinese charters, while chapters on the Mongolians’ love of their culture and homeland have been deleted. The language used in music textbooks has also been switched to Chinese.
On Wednesday, the Urad Middle Banner issued an urgent directive to all civil servants, ordering them to take their children and report to school by Thursday noon or face dismissal.
Large numbers of armored personnel carriers were patrolling the streets and roadblocks had been set up between cities and ethnic banner communities, according to ethnic Mongolian herders.
Four high-school students belonging to the Shiliin-Gol League began a hunger strike on the first day of school over the new Chinese-medium education policy, said Khereid Khuvisgalt, a Japan-based ethnic Mongolian scholar.
More than 300 ethnic Mongolian employees of the state-run Inner Mongolia Radio Station also signed a petition saying that they could not accept the policy, the scholar said.
The government claimed overseas forces were behind the unrest. On Thursday, Bayannur police in western Inner Mongolia issued a notice saying people with “ulterior motives” were making up rumors and distorting the significance of the language policy in order to goad the public into opposing it. The public security bureau would take a tough stance according to the law, mainland media reported.
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