An ethnic Mongolian civil servant died on Friday, with a suicide note circulated online linking her death to recent protests against the Chinese government’s decision to phase out Mongolian as the main medium of instruction in schools.

Surnaa, 33, worked for a panel of the Communist Party in the Alxa administrative unit of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. She fell from her flat on Friday morning.

Her husband, Altanbagan, was quoted by internet users as saying Surnaa had been facing huge pressure because she wanted to protect the Mongolian language and culture and disagreed with the recent change in education policy. He was said to have been told by the hospital to tell others that depression was the reason his wife killed herself.

It was the fourth enigmatic death reportedly connected to the education policy change, since over 10,000 ethnic Mongolian parents and students rallied on Aug. 30 to oppose the switch from their native Mongolian language to Mandarin Chinese in the teaching of key subjects from Sept. 1.

The large-scale protest was followed by massive school boycotts that left most classrooms in the region empty in the first week of the new school term. In efforts to end the boycott action, government officials had been visiting ethnic Mongolian families demanding parents send their children to school or face confiscation of their land deeds.

On Friday, police issued a notice about Surnaa’s death, claiming she had a history of depression and previously tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrist. The notice also urged internet users not to believe rumors and to stop spreading falsehoods, and warned that the police would take legal action against unconfirmed, untrue information released on the web and acts that violated the privacy of citizens.

The three other reported deaths in Inner Mongolia were also suicides by jumping off a building, according to a United States-based Mongol activist named Nomin. They concerned a fifth-grader who leapt from the fourth floor after learning police had beaten up his mother, a teacher from the Zhenglan banner of the Shiliin Gol league, and a Mongolian herder from the Orniud banner, Nomin was cited by Radio Free Asia as saying.

Some ethnic Mongolians have recently been turned away by hotels when travelling in nearby regions such as Ningxia. The same is said to have happened to Tibetans and Xinjiang’s Uighurs before.

Inner Mongolia’s department of education announced earlier that the region’s primary schools would henceforth teach key subjects such as politics and history in Mandarin instead of Mongolian. Mongolian language lessons would be reduced to three sessions a week from five, along with an increase of Mandarin sessions from three to five per week.

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