Members of the Inner Mongolian People’s Party who attended the  special meeting in Japan held a protest demonstration in front of the Chinese Embassy to Japan in Tokyo on March 2, 2006.

The protestors held high banners reading “Release Hada!”, “Free Southern Mongolia”, “Independence of Southern Mongolia”, “Human Rights for Southern Mongolia”, “Protect Mongolian Culture and Grasslands”, and “Chinggis Khan Mausoleum, Sacred Place of Mongolians” and shouted slogans condemning the Chinese authorities’ colonial regime and oppressive policy in Southern Mongolia. The protestors also distributed the “Tokyo Declaration” to numerous Japanese who showed great sympathy toward what is happening in Southern Mongolia.

“Southern Mongolia is a land of broken promises where so much was promised by the Chinese Government but so little was delivered,” one of the protestors said to the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center over the phone, “the early promises of autonomy have been seen now as just paper promises and Mongols like Hada, leader of the Southern Mongolian Democratic Alliance, who demanded ‘real autonomy’ for the Mongols have been punished harshly with long jail sentences.” The protestors also strongly condemned the Chinese authorities’ policy of privatizing the Chinggis Khan Mausoleum that has long been regarded by Mongols around the world as a sacred place but  two years ago was transferred from nominal Mongol control to a Chinese firm in the name of “boosting local tourism” and “opening up the west”. The commercialization of the Chinggis Khan Mausoleum has been seen as one more act of disrespect to the Mongols and Mongols around the world have strongly criticized the policy including the relatively moderate Southern Mongolian students and scholars in Japan.

Since the establishment of the Inner Mongolian People’s Party in 1997, numerous protest demonstrations in front of Chinese embassies in many countries have been held. However, this is the first time the Party has held a public demonstration against China in Japan, a democratic nation that has long maintained a delicate relationship with her dictator neighbor China.

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