Ms. Govruud Huuchinhuu, a Southern (Inner) Mongolian dissident writer, activist and member of the banned organization Southern Mongolian Democratic Alliance (SMDA), has gone missing since January 27, 2011, after she was reportedly released from a police-guarded hospital in the region’s Tongliao Municipality. Ms Huuchinhuu had been placed under house arrest on November 11, 2010, after a brief detention by the Tongliao City Public Security Bureau, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR), for rallying the Mongols through the Internet to cheer for the scheduled release of Hada. Hada is a prominent Mongolian political prisoner and head of SMDA, who remains missing after his expected release date December 10, 2010 having completed his 15 year jail term.

During her house arrest, Huuchinhuu had very limited access to the outside. Her home phone and Internet line were cut off. More than twenty police with two vehicles guarded her around-the-clock. Huuchinhuu was hospitalized in a local hospital in Tongliao City in late December 2010 due to a serious health condition. She was diagnosed with a lacunar cerebral infarction. According to her son Cheel Borjigin who currently lives in the United States, Huuchinhuu had suffered a painful headache for more than a month in the hospital before she was given an anesthetic treatment that relieved her symptom superficially. Police followed her to the hospital and guarded her at her hospital bed.

“My mother was constantly harassed by the police who guarded her round-the-clock in spite of the excruciating headache she suffered day and night,” Cheel told SMHRIC, “in front of other patients in the hospital room, the police treated my mother rudely, using bad words and called her a criminal.”

As a breast cancer patient, single mother, dissident writer and staunch advocate of human rights of the Mongols in China, Huuchinhuu fought tirelessly despite the physical ordeal, economic hardship and political persecution over the past two decades.

Huuchinhuu 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, press and association of the Mongols in Southern Mongolia in particular through the Internet. 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 shut down 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 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 is prohibited from going abroad” effective for 5 years from the date of the issuance of the notice.