The Los Angeles Times (Sept. 3, 2009) reported that a journalist who was on a trip to China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (NAMAR) to cover public protests over the government’s reform of the Unified Textbook System (UTS) was detained for more than four hours and had a police officer strangle her at one point before being removed from NAMAR.
On August 26, the Education Department of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region issued a new policy requiring local Mongolian-language elementary and middle schools to switch to the Ministry of Education’s “Language” textbook as of September 1, and to gradually begin using the textbook and Mandarin for political science and history classes in the first grade of elementary schools for the next two years. This incident subsequently sparked discontent and protests from the local Mongolian population. According to the Los Angeles Times, the journalist was surrounded by plainclothes men at a school in Hohhot during an interview and was taken to a police station in a police car for questioning.
According to the report, the female journalist was separated from her belongings when she was taken in for questioning, and although she told police she was an officially recognized journalist, her detaining officers denied her request to contact the U.S. Embassy. At one point, a police officer put his hands around the journalist’s throat and pushed her into a cell. After being held for more than four hours, she was escorted by three government officials and a police officer to a train station, where she was forced to leave Inner Mongolia on a train bound for Beijing.
Although the Los Angeles Times report did not identify the journalist who was subjected to the ordeal, the Associated Press report identified the journalist as Alice Su, a Beijing-based reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Su later confirmed to the Associated Press that she was the victim, but declined to comment on the incident.
In a separate report, Su cited an anonymous police source in Inner Mongolia who said that the regional security department was working overtime. The source said that “in the police station where he works, police have been detaining people every day for the past two weeks. It also showed the newspaper pictures of arrest orders issued from the police internal platform and said that they “receive new targets (for arrest) every two to three hours, usually people who have participated in protests or supported protests online.
The source said local police are entering the Mongolians’ homes and making them sign a pledge to stop opposing the “bilingual program. If they don’t comply, he said, “they will be detained and will become ‘key figures’ in the Chinese police database marked as security threats requiring targeted surveillance and control.
The source said, “This is terrible.” He said, “Those arrested include the elderly, pregnant women and high school students, and those flagged as ‘key figures’ will be under lifelong surveillance.” The police officer added that he had refused to participate in the crackdown, and that many Mongolian policemen with school-age children at home had also refused to go to work at all. He stated, “I am an ethnic Mongolian. I will not arrest Mongolians.” He added that there was no legal basis for arresting people defending their native language, “I want to follow my own principles.”
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