On November 30, 2013, 17 Mongolian herders from western Southern (Inner) Mongolia\u2019s Urad Middle Banner (\u201cwu la te zhong qi\u201d in Chinese) were expelled from Beijing. They had spent the previous 12 days submitting appeals to Central Government authorities, attempting to solicit support from the Chinese State Council Letter and Visitation Bureau and the Ministry of Agriculture to restrain local government officials and Chinese miners from illegally occupying their grazing lands. Dispatches from the local Urad Middle Banner government and the Public Security authorities carried out the expulsion of the protesting herders from Beijing. The herders are currently confined to their communities and barred from communications with higher government authorities. According to written communications received by the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), the herders are protesting: 1. illegal land expropriation and land sale by local government officials to the Chinese; 2. destruction of the herders\u2019 grazing land by Chinese miners and military bases; 3. the government\u2019s failure to provide adequate redress and compensation to the affected herders.<\/p>\n
On November 30, 2013, 17 Mongolian herders from western Southern (Inner) Mongolia\u2019s Urad Middle Banner (\u201cwu la te zhong qi\u201d in Chinese) were expelled from Beijing. They had spent the previous 12 days submitting appeals to Central Government authorities, attempting to solicit support from the Chinese State Council Letter and Visitation Bureau and the Ministry of Agriculture to restrain local government officials and Chinese miners from illegally occupying their grazing lands. Dispatches from the local Urad Middle Banner government and the Public Security authorities carried out the expulsion of the protesting herders from Beijing. The herders are currently confined to their communities and barred from communications with higher government authorities.<\/span><\/p>\n According to written communications received by the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), the herders are protesting: 1. illegal land expropriation and land sale by local government officials to the Chinese; 2. destruction of the herders\u2019 grazing land by Chinese miners and military bases; 3. the government\u2019s failure to provide adequate redress and compensation to the affected herders.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe have been protesting for more than 7 years in order to defend our grazing lands from the illegal occupations and expropriations by the Chinese,\u201d Ms.Odongerel, a herdswoman from Urad Middle Banner told SMHRIC in a phone interview, \u201cwe are still continuing our protests.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As an organizer of the herders\u2019 protests, Odongeral was arrested, detained and jailed multiple times by the Urad Middle Banner Public Security Bureau. On November 15, 2012, she was sentenced to a year and half of reeducation through labor for organizing herders to stage protests in front of the local governments and in Beijing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI was sentenced to 1.5 years in reeducation through labor last November, and thrown into a labor camp in Hohhot along with many drug convicts,\u201d Odongerel told SMRHIC over the phone, \u201cand I was released on April 16, 2013 thanks to our fellow herders\u2019 pressure on the government\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOn one occasion I was arrested and detained in a military base near the border with the independent country of Mongolia for 10 days for organizing the herders to protest the military base\u2019s illegal occupation of our grazing land,\u201d Ordongerel added.<\/span><\/p>\n The communication also documented the death of a Mongolian herder named Ms.Erdenetuyaa who was run over by a car on a street in Beijing as she was protesting along with the other herders.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAs an outspoken critic of illegal land grab, Erdenetuyaa was killed by a car in Beijing while we were crossing a street,\u201d Odongerel told SMHRIC.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe herders consider this was not a traffic accident, but an intentional killing,\u201d Odongerel expressed her anger and revealed that the Chinese authorities negotiated with the victim\u2019s family immediately and offered 930,000 yuan (approximately 153,000 USD) as compensation to the family.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf this was a traffic accident, the government would have not been that nervous, and the poor herder\u2019s family would have not been paid 930,000 yuan,\u201d Odongerel expressed her doubt.<\/span><\/p>\n Mr. Burenzayaa, another community leader from the same Banner, confirmed the death of Erdenetuyaa in Beijing, and revealed how the family members of the victim were silenced on the case.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes, Erdenetuyaa lost her life in Beijing, and her family members have been pressured by the authorities not to pursue any legal action. The case was completely closed after the family members were paid the compensation,\u201d Burenzayaa told SMHRIC in a phone interview.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Burenzayaa, this year alone, the herders have staged multiple protests and sit-ins near the Banner government building in Haliut Township. Riot police and security personnel poured into Haliut Township to put down the herders\u2019 protests. Dozens of herders were arrested, beaten and detained in July and August as hundreds of herders carried out days of sit-ins (see the pictures of the scenes).<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cFrom seven year old kids to seventy year olds, herders from all part of the Banner gathered to protest the illegal expropriation of our grazing lands and the government\u2019s failure to redress our grievances,\u201d Burenzayaa said in the interview.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cA seven-year old orphan girl was left alone at the sit-in after her grandmother who lived with her was taken away by police,\u201d Burenzanyaa commented over the phone on the picture of the young girl left unattended, \u201cwhen she asked a policeman where her grandmother is, the policeman mockingly told her that her grandmother is dancing at a dance party.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n As the Chinese Communist Party Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee approached, the Chinese authorities tightened up their surveillance over the herders\u2019 communities in the Banner. On November 4, two herders, Mr.Davharaa and Mr.Tsetsengaa were taken away from their homes and detained for three days with no judicial process or legal explanation.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis time our 17 herders\u2019 representatives went to Beijing and tried to appeal to the Central Government for a just solution to our grievances,\u201d Burenzayaa said disappointedly, \u201cunfortunately our appeals are still ignored and the government of Urad Middle Banner shows no sign of returning our lands or compensating us for our losses.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mr. Gansukh, an elderly Mongolian herder in his 70s from the same Banner, told SMHRIC in a phone interview that his grazing lands as well as that of his relatives were recently occupied by Chinese settlers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is our land. We have lived here for generations and generations as herders. Now all of sudden, our ancestral lands are taken away by outsiders,\u201d Gansukh expressed his outrage.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat is most outrageous is that many of our herders have been changed to \u2018others\u2019 on their household registration cards, becoming neither urban nor rural population, but outsiders on our own lands,\u201d Gansukh added.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On November 30, 2013, 17 Mongolian herders from western Southern (Inner) Mongolia\u2019s Urad Middle Banner (\u201cwu la te zhong qi\u201d in Chinese) were expelled from Beijing. They had spent the previous 12 days submitting appeals to Central Government authorities, attempting to solicit support from the Chinese State Council Letter and Visitation Bureau and the Ministry of Agriculture to restrain local government officials and Chinese miners from illegally occupying their grazing lands. Dispatches from the local Urad Middle Banner government and the Public Security authorities carried out the expulsion of the protesting herders from Beijing. The herders are currently confined to their communities and barred from communications with higher government authorities. According to written communications received by the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), the herders are protesting: 1. illegal land expropriation and land sale by local government officials to the Chinese; 2. destruction of the herders\u2019 grazing land by Chinese miners and military bases; 3. the government\u2019s failure to provide adequate redress and compensation to the affected herders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,18,61,60,57,62,59,58],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-china","tag-chinese-government","tag-grazing-land","tag-illegal-land-expropriation","tag-inner-mongolia","tag-land-grab","tag-mongolian-herders","tag-protest"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}