One dead and 50 arrested after pollution protest in China’s Inner Mongolia

One person died and 50 were arrested after some 2,000 police, using rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons, put down a protest by villagers against pollution from a chemical plant in China’s Inner Mongolia, an overseas human rights group said.

Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region almost the size of Tibet that stretches from Heilongiang province almost to Xinjiang, has seen sporadic unrest since 2011 when the region was rocked by protests after an ethnic Mongol herder was killed by a truck after taking part in demonstrations against pollution caused by a coal mine.

Ethnic Mongols, who make up less than 20 per cent of Inner Mongolia’s 24 million population, say their grazing lands have been ruined by mining and desertification and that the government has tried to resettle them in permanent houses.

Coal-rich Inner Mongolia is supposed to enjoy a high degree of self-rule, but many Mongols say the Han Chinese majority has benefited most by economic development.

In the latest incident, villagers in Naiman county, next to the northeast provinces of Liaoning and Jilin, took to the streets to protest against a chemical processing zone they said was polluting farmland and grazing land, the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre said on Monday.

The group quoted a witness as saying police used rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons to disperse the demonstrators, leading to one death.