Following the disclosure of a 'secret plan' to wipe out Mongolian-language education in the Nei Mongol Autonomous Region in the final phase of a decades-long cultural campaign, protests erupted in Southern Mongolian society. A blogger named Nasandelger said in a recently formed WeChat group “Southern Mongolia has quickly become a police state again in the past few days as the tension has risen between the government and the Mongolians who are about to be deprived of their last symbol of national identity—the Mongolian language.” On the evening of August 23, Bainuu, the only Mongolian-language social media application available in China, which hosted about 400,000 Southern Mongolians users, was shut down by the Chinese authorities. Dugar Zaisan, an active Bainuu member and host of several chat groups on the platform, told the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) “The systematic crackdown really started from the total shutdown of all Bainuu chat groups last Wednesday around 4 pm local time. Then almost 72 hours later, around 4 pm Saturday local time, the timelines and walls of all Bainuu users became unavailable.” A Mongolian named Oyuungerel said in an audio statement posted on WeChat that “At least 28 people in our WeChat groups, mostly consisting of concerned parents and students, were either summoned or visited by State Security personnel in a single day.” Others estimated that at least 450 Southern Mongolian WeChat users have been warned by local State Security and Public Security authorities either over the phone or in-person not to spread information about the “bilingual education” program online.
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