Beijing tightened its crackdown on social media in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia following protests and classroom boycotts over plans to scrap local-language education in schools.

The region’s police on Thursday warned administrators of social media group chats on WeChat that they can be held responsible for “illegal messages” sent on or from their group even if they were not the sender.

There has been widespread opposition after the government said it would replace school textbooks in the local language with Mandarin ones over the next few years: parents kept their children out of school and residents organized street protests. Critics compared the proposal to similar policies in Tibet and Xinjiang that they said sought to eliminate indigenous culture.

“Whoever created the group takes full responsibility,” the police notice said. Chat administrators were told to “strictly fulfil” their responsibilities in running the groups.

The new police directive drew immediate fire from critics — including some from the mainland — who said the rule was too ambiguous and prone to abuse if used to crack down on dissident voices.

The new rule contradicts regulations introduced three years ago which stipulated that group chat operators only violate the law if they maliciously or negligently allow misinformation to be spread, Guangdong-based Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

Also, it is hard for administrators to identify misinformation, as information from unverified sources may turn out to be true. “Rumors are only rumors when they are confirmed to be wrong,” according to a legal expert cited in the story.

The article was quickly removed from the Southern Metropolis official website.

In the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in China, doctors were also banned from discussing what is now known as COVID-19. Some were reprimanded for revealing what they knew on social media, including Wuhan-based doctor Li Wenliang, who was one of the first physicians to expose the disease. He later died of COVID-19 complications.

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