The following is a statement by Enghebatu Togochog, Director of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) at the Interethnic/Interfaith conference at Rayburn House Office Building in  Washington DC on December 10, 2018:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is my great privilege to be here today on the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to share our views and experiences that the Southern Mongolians have gone through under the Chinese colonial regime.

Home to six million Mongolians, Southern Mongolia, had never been a part of China up until 1949 when the Communist China took over the region. Becoming China’s so-called “first Nationality Autonomous Region”, Southern Mongolia has been subjected to China’s series of political purges, ethnic cleansing, cultural assimilation, economic exploitation and environmental destruction.

Surviving China’s large-scale genocide campaign in 1960s through 1970s, today, Southern Mongolians are facing a different form of genocide which we call “cultural genocide”. The government of China is determined to wipe out Mongolian distinct culture and nomadic civilization once for all. The policies adopted for this effort include the “ecological migration”, “livestock grazing ban”, and most recent “experiment of implementation of bilingual education in Mongolian elementary and middle schools” that is aimed at the total denial of the Mongolian right to receive education in their native language.

Mongolians who maintained the perfect balance of men and nature for thousands of years are now blamed for the environmental degradation that in fact is caused by non-sustainable farming and unscrupulous mining practice by the Chinese; Mongolian herders who stood up to defend their land and rights are arrested, detained and sent to jail en masse; Mongolian culture, language and traditions are eliminated and Mongolian local communities are torn apart.

If we carefully examine the very nature of the Chinese regime, it has a very different meaning to the Chinese of China proper and the people of the occupied nations. To the Chinese, Chinese regime is an authoritarian regime. To the Southern Mongolians, Tibetans and Uyghurs, it is a colonial regime with an authoritarian nature.

Terrorism, extremism, religious conflict and sectarian violence are hotly discussed these days. However, the world is largely indifferent to state terrorism. Look at how China is terrorizing the Uyghurs, Mongolians and Tibetans, as well their own people.  The Chinese regime or the Chinese Communist Party is the largest and most brutal terrorist organization on earth.

So, defending human rights and promoting freedom is not the only task lying ahead of us. It is our also responsibility to awaken the public of the free and democratic world from their indifference and inaction that help embolden China to continue to carry out the state terror against one quarter of the world’s population.

Thank you.