2015-01-13
Herders from Urad Middle Banner petition in front of the Ministry of Agriculture building in Beijing, Nov. 2013.
Photo courtesy of SMHRIC
Dozens of herders from China’s Inner Mongolia region converged on Beijing on Tuesday to lodge a complaint with the national government over a land grab they say left them with scant income.
The ethnic Mongolian herders said they were forced in 2011 to move from traditional grazing lands to the north of the regional capital, Hohhot, as the area was taken over by China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Herding communities in Durbed (in Chinese, Siziwang) Banner told RFA they were promised far larger sums in compensation than they had actually received.
“The Beijing Military Command District [of the PLA] took over our grazing lands starting in 2011, and by June 2012 we had all moved out,” said Altanhuala, a herder from the banner—the administrative equivalent of a county.
“Here in Durbed, authorities told us that the government would pay us 1.8 million yuan (U.S. $290,530) in compensation, averaging 96,000 yuan (U.S. $15,500) per person,” he said.
“Up until now, we have received 147,000 yuan (U.S. $23,730),” Altanhuala said. “At the time, they told us that the grasslands didn’t belong to us, but to the state, and that we had to move out because we were on someone else’s land.”
Huge tracts of grassland on which ethnic Mongolian herding communities depend for a living are constantly being taken over, forcing them to take action to protect their culture and livelihood, rights groups say.
Ethnic Mongolians, who make up almost 20 percent of Inner Mongolia’s population of 23 million, are increasingly complaining of widespread environmental destruction and unfair development policies in the region.
Clashes between Chinese companies and ethnic Mongolian herders are common in the region, which borders the independent country of Mongolia.
Thirty-year leases
Local herding communities took out 30-year “household responsibility” leases on the grasslands around Durbed between 1988 and 1998, Altanhuala said.
“We have a contract which promises that they will remain unchanged for 30 years,” he said. “We still have more than a dozen years left on the lease.”
He said a typical household could expect an income of 40,000-50,000 yuan (U.S. $6,460-8,070) annually from several hundred sheep on the grassland.
