After the Communist Party’s General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed the need to “actively cultivate a sense of community among the Chinese people” at the 2014 Central Ethnic Work Conference, China’s recent push for a Chineseization policy in Inner Mongolia has drawn criticism for “cultural genocide,” prompting hundreds of thousands of people to call it “cultural extermination. Mongolians go on strike and rally. Two months later, several departments in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region recently issued a document recruiting 300 Chinese language teachers from other provinces to teach Chinese to Mongolian students.
The government of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region launched a so-called bilingual education model in the region on September 1 this year, which means that ethnic school students will receive Chinese language education starting from the first grade of elementary school and the first grade of junior high school, two years earlier than the previous Chinese language education for third-graders. Two months later, four departments, including the Department of Education and the Department of Finance of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, jointly issued a document entitled “Several Measures to Strengthen the Construction of Teachers for the State-Codified Teaching Materials for Ethnic Language Teaching Schools,” according to which the authorities proceeded to recruit “teachers with special positions” nationwide. In other words, Han Chinese teachers were invited to teach Chinese to Mongolian students.
This move has reignited fears among Mongolians at home and abroad that the government is gradually extinguishing Mongolian culture. Haiying Yang, a university professor who was born in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, and now lives in Japan, said in an interview with Radio Free Asia on Tuesday that the authorities’ move is aimed at further eliminating education in the Mongolian mother tongue.
First of all, he said, “If we recruit students nationwide, it means we don’t recruit students in Inner Mongolia, and he is sure that all of them are Han Chinese. It is for this purpose that he is replacing Mongolian teachers in Inner Mongolia to further strengthen the assimilation policy.
Authorities in the recruitment of special positions plan to say that this year will recruit 300 “special teachers”, the registration age of 35 years old and below, undergraduate and above education, must provide school issued by the ideological character and political performance proof. The written test will be held on the 12th of this month and the results will be announced after December 19.
According to Yang Haiying, the authorities said the first batch of 300 teachers will be recruited, but the actual number should be more than that.
Yang Haiying said: “300 is a small number, and there is definitely a need for a much larger migration. During the Cultural Revolution, the same slogan of developing and supporting the frontier and then recruiting peasants from the mainland was used to deceive Mongolians.
In late August and early September, hundreds of thousands of Mongolian students and their parents went on strike in Tongliao, Ordos, and Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, against the authorities’ policy of forcing the teaching of Chinese as a second language since the first grade of elementary school, and 8,000 to 10,000 people were taken away. Most of them were later released. However, it has been nearly three months since the arrest of Hu Baolong, an ethnic Mongolian lawyer who was involved in the strike as a parent, and Yang Jindu Lima, a human rights activist, among others.
There has been no news of about 70 people,” Nomin, who lives in Mongolia, told the station.
More than 30 Mongolians have been arrested in each of the Right Banner of Bahrain and the Ungniut Banner, he said. The 30 or so herders arrested in the Right Banner of Bahrain are all women. However, there has been no accurate information about their release so far. In addition, local officials were forced to appear on television to show their support for the government’s universal language policy. However, some officials refused and resigned from their posts. There are many examples of this.
According to Nomin, a total of six secretaries, sumo chiefs, and school principals from three Keshkoten Banner sugars were forced to resign.
The police brought seven people to the police station in handcuffs and shackles after the Mongolian language team of Inner Mongolia Television opposed the universal language policy. They thought the seven were leading the opposition. In China, only heavy criminals wear leg irons and handcuffs,” he said.
Now, according to Nomin, the Inner Mongolian authorities are completely silent, monitoring or tracking every journalist who tries to go there.
Kubis, an ethnic Mongolian scholar living in Japan, says that in WeChat, Mongolian farmers and herders do not dare to discuss the current situation in their chat groups.
Kubis said, “In many groups, no one talks about language issues, and I am always watching. If they talk about language, they are immediately warned or immediately arrested. A police coordinator must be added to the group of students’ parents.
Among those facing prosecution for opposing the government’s “bilingual education” are Mongolian human rights lawyer Hu Baolong, opinion leader Yang Jindu Lima, and a WeChat group leader.
Recent Comments