The following is an excerpt from the United States Congressional Executive Commission on China Annual Report 2010:
Human Rights in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region
Authorities in the Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region (IMAR) continued
in the past year to restrict
independent expressions of ethnic
identity among Mongols and to
interfere with traditional
livelihoods, while enforcing
campaigns to promote stability and
ethnic unity. In a December 2009
interview, the head of the IMAR
Public Security Department likened
the region's public security
situation to that in the autonomous
Tibetan areas of China and Xinjiang
Uyghur Autonomous Region, stating
"enemy forces" from Western
countries aimed to split the
region.In September 2009, the IMAR
Department of Education issued a
detailed plan for strengthening
ethnic unity education in IMAR
schools.Authorities strengthened
“ecological migration” policies that
have required herders to resettle
from pasture land and abandon
traditional livelihoods, while
outside observers and some domestic
scholars have questioned the
effectiveness of these government
policies in ameliorating
environmental degradation.Mongols
continued to face the risk of
repercussions for peacefully
defending their rights or aiming to
preserve their culture. In a case
also illustrating China's influence
outside its borders and
contravention of protections for
asylum seekers, on October 3, 2009,
Chinese security officials inside
the country of Mongolia reportedly
joined Mongolian security officials
in detaining Batzangaa, an ethnic
Mongol from China. The detention
occurred outside the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees office in
Ulaanbaatar, where Batzangaa had
applied for refugee status.
Authorities returned him to China
and held him in detention. Batzangaa
ran a traditional Mongolian medicine
school in Ordos municipality, IMAR,
that reportedly had come under
official scrutiny for its popularity
and activities with Mongols and
Tibetans, and he was also involved
in a land dispute with local
authorities. On April 18, 2010,
officials at the Beijing Capital
International Airport detained
rights advocate Sodmongol as he was
waiting to board a flight to the
United States to attend the UN
Permanent Forum on Indigenous
Issues. Sodmongol had organized
events and led two Web sites--now
shut down--that promoted the
protection of Mongols' rights. His
current whereabouts remain unknown.