Paramilitary police sealed off parts of
two county seats in China's Inner Mongolia for a second day Saturday in
what residents described as a kind of martial law after a series of
protests triggered by the death of a Mongolian herder run over by a
Chinese truck driver.
The demonstrations this past week in two
counties and a nearby city are rare for Inner Mongolia, unlike China's
other troubled border regions of Tibet and Xinjiang which have erupted
in violent protests in recent years.While no protests were reported Saturday, residents said police continued to cordon off streets leading to government buildings in the seats of the two counties, known as Zhenglan and Xiwu in Chinese or Shuluun Huh and Ujumchin in Mongolian.
"Martial law was imposed around the government again today. About 100 armed police carrying batons are stationed there. People are barred from entering that area," said a retiree living in the Zhenglan county seat who was reached by phone. He would only identify himself by his surname, Wang.
High school students in Zhenglan were also being kept in school over the weekend in an effort to prevent them from protesting, according to a New York-based advocacy group, the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center. It said universities and schools in at least two other major cities in the region were under tight security, and chat rooms on a popular instant messaging service were being closed down.
The report could not be independently verified. Calls to government offices rang unanswered, or in the case of Xilinhot city — near the two troubled counties — a duty officer referred questions to the cellphone of the government's chief secretary, which also was not answered.
Protests occurred every day this past week in the two county seats and Xilinhot, with the largest a march by thousands of Mongolians led by students in uniform on Wednesday in Xilinhot. Hundreds of herders marched in Zhenglan on Friday until they were stopped by police. Accounts differ over whether a clash ensued.
The region's traditional way of life — herding sheep and cattle — has almost disappeared as the grasslands give out to mining, farming and urban sprawl. A coal mining boom is accelerating the degradation, and a standoff between herders and coal truckers precipitated the recent protests.
Angry at truckers for driving over their grazing lands, herders blocked a road, and one truck driver struck and killed a herder, Mergen, who like many Mongolians goes by one name. Authorities later arrested two Chinese in the incident.
The protests are believed to be the largest since 20 years ago, when a surge of ethnic nationalism swept the region, inspired by its northern neighbor, Mongolia, which was in the throes of a democratic movement after decades of being a Soviet client state.
Unlike Tibetans in Tibet and Uighurs in Xinjiang, ethnic Mongolians are a small minority, less than 20 percent of the 24 million people in Inner Mongolia. Many speak little or no Mongolian, having been educated in Chinese school systems. AP
