Ms. Govruud Huuchinhuu, a Southern (Inner) Mongolian dissident writer, activist and member of the Southern Mongolian Democratic Alliance (SMDA), was taken away from her residence in eastern Southern Mongolia’s Tongliao City by two plain-clothes police of Horchin District Public Security Bureau on the afternoon of November 11, 2010. The reason for the arrest is due to Huuchinhuu’s efforts to rally and organize the Mongols to welcome Mr. Hada, a prominent ethnic Mongolian political prisoner who is expected to be freed on December 10, 2010 after completing his 15 years jail term.

After a brief detention at the Horchin District Public Security Bureau, Huuchinhuu was sent back home, but has been placed under house arrest that, according to her statement sent to the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, will possibly not be lifted before the release of Hada.

“On the morning of November 12, when I opened my door to dump the garbage and wanted to go to pay my phone bill three plain-clothes police stopped me and asked me not to leave home,” Ms. Huuchinhuu writes in her statement, “no choice I asked them to dump my garbage and pay my phone bill. They agreed to pay my phone bill for me with the 200 Yuan I gave them, but they refused to dump my garbage.”

As a staunch advocate of human rights Huuchinhuu has been very active in promoting and protecting the rights of Southern Mongolians since her participation in the 1981 Mongolian Student Movement in Southern Mongolia. She has been an active member of SMDA, an ethnic Mongolian organization dedicated to the struggle of Southern Mongolians to obtain greater autonomy and the protection of Mongolian culture, language and identity. SMDA was suppressed in 1995 and its leader Hada was sentenced to 15 years in jail.

Although detained, questioned, threatened and harassed on numerous occasions by the Chinese authorities, Huuchinhuu has continually rejected any type of cooperation with the Chinese authorities. Many times the Public Security authorities and the Principal of the school where she worked asked her to sign a paper to give up her membership to SMDA and her dissent with the enticement that her salary would be doubled. Huuchinhuu has never accepted this and continued to publicly identify herself as a member of SMDA.

As a dissident writer Huuchinhuu also authored several books and hundreds of essays to express her opinion on ethnic problems and to criticize the Chinese authorities’ repressive ethnic policy in Southern Mongolia. Her two books entitled “Stone-hearted Tree” and “Silent Stone” have been banned recently and confiscated from bookstores that carried them.

Since the late 1990s, Huuchinhuu has been actively advocating freedom of speech and press of the Mongols in Southern Mongolia. She volunteered to help administer a number of Internet discussion forums by Mongolian students and intellectuals including www.nutuge.com, www.ehoron.com, and www.mongolger.net , all three of which have been shutdown by the Chinese authorities for “posting separatism contents” and “discussing ethnic problems”.

In August 2007, Huuchinhuu planned to visit the independent country of Mongolia and applied for a passport with the local Public Security Bureau. Considered as a “possible threat to the national interest and state security of China”, her passport application was turned down, and she was given an official notice from the Tongliao Municipality Public Security Bureau stating that she was categorized as a “person who prohibited from going abroad” effective for 5 years since the issuance of the notice.

For more information about Huuchinhuu, please reach her at: 0086-475-639-3513 (home) or 0086-187-4743-0115 (cell).