2015-04-06
Armed riot police block highway in Inner Mongolia’s Naiman Banner, April 6, 2015.
Photo courtesy of SMHRIC.
Police in China’s northern Inner Mongolia region are holding dozens of people after firing tear-gas, water cannon and rubber bullets at crowds protesting chemical pollutoin over the weekend, ethnic Mongolian protesters said on Monday.
The clashes came after the authorities mobilized some 2,000 riot police to end three weeks of protests over alleged pollution from a chemical plant near Daachin-tal (in Chinese, Daqintala) village in Naiman Banner, the Mongolian equivalent of a county.
Local residents say the Naiman Chemical Refinery Zone has been polluting the area with toxic waste, and have staged protests which read: “Strongly protest serious pollution from the chemical refinery!” and “Give the Naiman people back their clean water and blue sky!”
Video clips of the protest published by the U.S.-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) show police in full riot gear chasing protesters, with sporadic bursts of what sounds like gunfire.
Dozens of people were detained in the clashes, while more than 100 were sent to hospital with injuries sustained during the melee, local residents and SMHRIC said.
“More than 1,000 local people went [out in protest], to prevent the vehicles carrying raw materials from getting into the refinery,” a villager who asked to remain anonymous told RFA on Monday.
“The riot police and fire brigade came rushing over here, and attacked people with electric batons, and beat them up,” he said. “More than 2,000 police came over here yesterday evening.”
“More than 170 people were injured, and they detained more than 70 people,” he said. “They haven’t yet released those they detained.”
“They used rubber bullets, and some people had head injuries from them,” the villager said. He also confirmed that tear gas fired on the crowds.
Rubber bullets
A resident from another village, around a kilometer from the refinery, said some 20 people had been detained from his village alone. “There were several villages involved in this,” the resident of Daolisui village told RFA.
An official who answered the phone at the Naiman Banner government offices on Monday said the government is doing everything it can to mediate the dispute.
“We take this very seriously, and our leaders are basically all down there at the scene, to see what’s going on,” the official said.
But he declined to comment further. “I didn’t go there, so there are a lot of things I’m not sure about,” he said.
An ethnic Mongolian resident identified by a single name Geegee also told SMHRIC that rubber bullets were fired on the crowd.
“Rubber bullets are being shot at protesters, and high-pressure water guns and tear gas are also being used,” she said.
“Yesterday, about 100 people were injured and 50 were arrested. One of the injured was confirmed dead in the hospital today,” Geegee told SMHRIC, although RFA was unable to confirm the reported death.
