Mongolians abroad gathered in front of the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo today, September 12, and then marched to protest the extermination of Mongolian language and culture by the Chinese authorities. A rally against the extermination of Mongolian culture is also expected to take place tomorrow in Paris.
Live video tweeted today from Tokyo shows the crowd at the demonstration displaying placards and flags with messages in Mongolian and Japanese. Some netizens say that Japanese people are also joining the protest because some Japanese people believe they have Mongolian ancestry and therefore support Mongolians defending their culture.
Since the recent start of the school year, the Chinese authorities have implemented an education reform in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region that requires Mongolian schools to teach the core curriculum in Chinese rather than Mongolian, leading tens of thousands of people in Inner Mongolia to participate in protests and strikes. They fear that the new curriculum will extinguish the Mongolian culture and eventually lead to genocide.
In defense of their language and culture, many Mongolian parents have taken their children home from school. Many Mongolian teachers, journalists, civil servants and other institutionalized people also joined the protest movement.
The authorities are using strong-arm tactics to coerce parents and teachers to force students to return to school. Authorities also tightly controlled WeChat and microblogs, holding group leaders accountable for their comments, and arrested protesters for causing trouble. According to Hong Kong media reports, at least 23 people were arrested in the Inner Mongolia resistance movement.
According to the Central News Agency, the CCP’s policy, which echoes similar practices in Tibet and Xinjiang, is aimed at assimilating ethnic minorities into the dominant Han ethnic group.
Several Taiwan aboriginal groups rallied on September 11 in support of the Mongols in defense of their language and culture. They held a press conference at the main gate of the Legislative Yuan to express their solidarity with the Mongolian people in their fight for language rights, stating that their mother tongue is their ethnic identity and that the extinction of their mother tongue is the extinction of their ethnic group.
These groups include the Taiwan Presbyterian Church’s Aboriginal Mission Committee, the Dayal National Assembly, the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Policy Association, and the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Tribal Action Coalition.
Yohani Isqaqavut, a former chairman of the Council of Indigenous Peoples, mentioned that the extinction of the mother tongue is the extinction of the community, and the language of the indigenous people is the identity of the community.
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