Southern Mongolia: Four Herdsmen Arrested for Online Petition Over Unpaid Subsidies
Photo Courtesy of Radio Free Asia
Four herdsmen were arrested on Monday [9 January 2017] for their role in an online petition. Signed by 500 herdsmen, the online appeal claimed unpaid subsidies they had been promised for having stopped grazing on protected land. In response to this, many herdsmen went to protest at the police station and were met with pepper spray. The herdsmen were allegedly entitled to subsidies for not grazing on pastureland that had been under serious strain from desertification and pollution for Chinese mining. Some of the other herdsmen that had also been arrested have since been released, however, the fate of the original four herdsmen remains unclear. This is happening in a context of ethnic Mongolians increasingly complaining against the environmental destruction taking place in Southern Mongolia due to Chinese state-backed mining and forestry companies.
Below is an article published by Radio Free Asia:
Police in Chinese-ruled Inner Mongolia arrested four herdsmen on Monday for their role in an organized online petition by 500 herdsmen over promised but unpaid subsidies for stopping grazing on protected land, local activists told RFA’s Mandarin Service.
"Yesterday police began to talk to local herdsmen to check who made the post on the Internet. Four people were taken away for jointly posting the online letter calling for protests; one of them is a breast-feeding woman,” said an activist in Hulun Buir in Inner Mongolia’s New Barag Right Banner.
“Consequently, a lot of herdsmen went to the police station to demand the release of the four but police used pepper spray to disperse them. They said the spray was toxic and made them suffer miserably. Someone lost consciousness and was rushed to hospital by an ambulance,” said the activist, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The activist said the herdsmen were legally entitled to subsidies to cover losses associated for setting aside pastureland to shield it from grazing in Inner Mongolia’s grasslands, which are under environmental stress from desertification and pollution from Chinese mining and other resource extraction activities.
The fate of the four detained organizers was unclear and there was no immediate comment from the local government.
“Police were afraid of the potential spread of protests, therefore released the protesting herdsmen. But I am not sure if the originally detained four have been freed or not,” said the activist.
“Police intimidated the protesters; they always do this in our area. Last year when local protests happened, police monitored herdsmen closely to prevent the news from being leaked.”
Ethnic Mongolians, who make up almost 20 percent of Inner Mongolia's population of 23 million, increasingly complain of widespread environmental destruction and unfair development policies in the region.
Clashes between Chinese state-backed mining or forestry companies and herding communities are common in the region, which borders the independent country of Mongolia.
