{"id":57872,"date":"2016-07-20T20:21:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T20:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=57872 "},"modified":"2016-07-20T20:21:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T20:21:00","slug":"57872-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=57872","title":{"rendered":"Herders in China\\’s Inner Mongolia Block Reservoir Construction"},"content":{"rendered":"

2016-07-19<\/span><\/p>

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Ethnic Mongolian herders face off with police and truck drivers during a blockade of a disputed highway construction project across their land in Lubei township, northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, July 15, 2016.<\/span><\/p>

Photo courtesy of a herder<\/span><\/p>

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Ethnic Mongolian herders in China’s northern region of Inner Mongolia on Friday faced off with police as they blockaded a reservoir construction project in protest at low levels of compensation for the loss of their traditional grazing lands.<\/span><\/p>

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Nearly 100 residents of Lubei township near the planned Maodu Reservoir in Inner Mongolia’s Zaruud Middle Banner staged a sit-in, preventing trucks from reaching the construction site on Tuesday, herders told RFA.<\/span><\/p>

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Construction of the reservoir is already under way, but the authorities are locked in a compensation dispute with local herding communities, with no agreement in sight, they said.<\/span><\/p>

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“There were about 70 or 80 of us who went [today],” a herder who asked to remain anonymous said. “The police were there, but they didn’t do anything to us.”<\/span><\/p>

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He said the herders were complaining that compensation offered for the loss of their grasslands is too low.<\/span><\/p>

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“Agricultural land is priced at 296,000 yuan per mu [U.S. $44,200 per 0.06 hectare], while grazing land is priced at 4,200 yuan [U.S. $627] per mu, while you get a bit more than 10,000 yuan [U.S. $1,493] per mu for forestry land,” the herder said.<\/span><\/p>

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He said around 610 people involved in the dispute, from more than 160 households in the affected area.<\/span><\/p>

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“The building of the Maodu reservoir is affecting the people of five villages,” the herder said.<\/span><\/p>

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\u2018<\/span>They won\u2019t compensate us\u2019<\/span><\/p>

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A second protester said the blockading protesters had prevented one truck carrying earth from going to the site.<\/span><\/p>

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“They are carrying earth, red clay, which belongs to local people,” the protester said. “We managed to stop several trucks yesterday.”<\/span><\/p>

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“It is being used to build the dam that will form the reservoir, but we wouldn’t let the trucks through, because they won’t compensate us,” he said.<\/span><\/p>

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“Local people stopped five trucks yesterday,” he said, adding that a handful of police officers were at the scene.<\/span><\/p>

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Zaruud banner authorities announced plans in November 2013 for the 478 million yuan (U.S. $71.4 million) Maodu reservoir, which is scheduled for completion later this year, in a bid to store water and combat creeping desertification.<\/span><\/p>

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With a planned capacity of more than 96 million cubic meters, the reservoir is a flagship local infrastructure project, according to official tender notices posted online.<\/span><\/p>

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But a local herder said the government had given little thought to what would happen to local people displaced by the project.<\/span><\/p>

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“The government has taken over this land to build a reservoir, but they have given us very little in compensation,” the herder said.<\/span><\/p>

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“This is a permanent takeover of the land; so what are we to live on for the rest of our lives?” he said. “The land will be lost to us forever.”<\/span><\/p>

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He said the government had declined to respond to attempts to negotiate a higher rate of compensation.<\/span><\/p>

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“They won’t do anything about it,” he said.<\/span><\/p>

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The herder also said residents will initially be moved to emergency housing costing more than 10,000 yuan per unit.<\/span><\/p>

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Repeated calls to the Zaruud banner government offices rang unanswered during office hours on Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>

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Two categories of protests<\/span><\/p>

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Ethnic Mongolian rights campaigners say protests in Inner Mongolia fall broadly into two categories: anti-pollution protests and protests over encroachment on the region’s diminishing grasslands.<\/span><\/p>

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Both issues strike at the heart of traditional Mongolian nomadic lifestyles, they say.<\/span><\/p>

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Many of China’s ethnic Mongolian herders hold their grazing lands under “household responsibility” contracts, which typically last up to 30 years.<\/span><\/p>

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But authorities routinely ignore the herders’ land rights when using land for road-building, mining, or forestry projects, rights activists say.<\/span><\/p>

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For detail please visit here<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>Nearly 100 residents of Lubei township near the planned Maodu Reservoir in Inner Mongolia's Zaruud Middle Banner staged a sit-in, preventing trucks from reaching the construction site on Tuesday, herders told RFA.<\/div><div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}