Jul 31, 2018

Southern Mongolia: Report Highlighting Human Rights Abuses


The Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) submitted a report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) underlining various human rights abuses against the Southern Mongolian people. The report is a testament to the struggle of Mongolians to continue their traditional way of life, including access to land and other resources, and declining use of their native tongue due to repressive and oppressive behaviour by Chinese authorities.

[The] report submitted by the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) on the occasion of the 96th Session of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) during which the People’s Republic of China’s compliance with CERD convention is reviewed, draws attention to human rights violations occurring in the country. More specifically, the report focus[es] on the Chinese authorities’ violation of six million Mongolians’ right to practice their traditional way of life, right to their land, water and other natural resources, right to use their native language, as well as Chinese authorities’ discriminatory, hostile and repressive attitude towards Mongolian tradition and identity in institutionalized and justified forms by Chinese propaganda apparatus and judicial system.

The report opens with a brief overview of the history of Southern Mongolia and the general issues in the region, to then cover several central issues: state-sponsored institutionalized form of discrimination, the treatment of Mongolian herders who are protesting for recognition of their rights; the arrest and detainment of political prisoners; degraded treatments of Mongolian political prisoners and their family members, the suppression of the Mongolian language throughout Southern Mongolia, and case examples of hate crime and hate speech by the Chinese toward the Mongolians.

Finally, it present[s] a series of recommendations aimed to facilitate constructive discussion during the CERD 96th Session in Geneva in August 2018.

To see the full SMHRIC report, please follow the link here to a PDF version.

Photo courtesy of Enkhbayar Batmunkh@ Flickr