Inner Mongolia to improve mine, transport safety after protests

Police tightened security in the capital of China's vast region of Inner Mongolia on Monday in the wake of nearly a week of protests and local authorities said they would improve mining safety rules following an accident which triggered the unrest.

In a rare display of public anger, ethnic Mongolians took to the streets early last week in protest over the hit-and-run death of a herder, killed after being struck by a coal truck in China's biggest coal producing region.

The government of the huge northern region, increasingly dominated by ethnic Han Chinese, told local agencies to address safety and environmental concerns related to the mining industry there, Xinhua news agency reported.

"All relevant departments, enterprises and local governments must promptly report and resolve injuries and accidents that occur in mining areas and transportation links, which have caused serious problems and reactions from the people," Xinhua said, citing a statement from Friday but without making any direct reference to the recent protests.

The government announced earlier the arrest of two Han Chinese for homicide over the incident, but that failed to quell the anger.

Inner Mongolia is China's biggest coal producing region and the protests come as severe power shortages loom ahead of the summer peak energy season.

But infrastructure is poor and the race by truck drivers, drawn by high margins, to transport coal to the country's east has been accompanied by a spate of traffic accidents.

In an unusual sign of defiance, hundreds of China's ethnic Mongolians, who make up less than 20% of the roughly 24 million population of Inner Mongolia, have protested in other parts of the province in recent days.

Authorities last week sealed off parts of the region and dispatched paramilitary police and others in riot gear to patrol Xinhua Square in the capital Hohhot after calls for protests spread online.

On Monday, main gates at Inner Mongolia University in Hohhot were closed and small groups of paramilitary police carrying batons stood guard in the streets, though students entered through smaller side gates.

"The university is under lockdown today. It's to prevent any disturbances," said one student who walking inside the university campus.

Xinhua Square remained cordoned off with paramilitary police evenly spaced every few metres and large groups of police inside the square and surrounding streets. Residents in the city appeared to carry on as normal.

Police pulled two Reuters reporters out of a car by the square and told them not to conduct interviews.

"Today there is a special situation," said one. "You have to leave."

The heavy security presence appeared to be effective.

"We haven't received any information about any protests there," said Enghebatu Togochog of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre, though he added difficult communications made it hard to get up-to-date information.

"Security is exceptionally tight. The authorities appear to be sending text messages to people warning them not to leave their homes."

Popular uprisings across the Arab world have made Beijing authorities especially jittery about any sign of instability at home.

Searches for the words "Inner Mongolia" on China's most popular microblogging site, Weibo, appeared to have been blocked on Monday morning, returning the message: "According to relevant laws, the search query cannot be displayed".

Resentment of ethnic majority Han Chinese by ethnic Mongolians goes back decades.

Inner Mongolia was the first autonomous region set up by the Communist Party and was meant to serve as a model for Tibet and Xinjiang in offering a high degree of self-government.

But a flood of migration by the majority Han Chinese in the years following the 1949 revolution has rapidly diluted the Mongolian population.

Ethnic Mongolian herders have complained that their traditional grazing lands have been ruined by mining and desertification, and that the government has tried to force them to settle in permanent houses.

"The Mongolians in Inner Mongolia are minorities in the their own homeland, and that factor makes the government less anxious than with the situations in Tibet and Xinjiang," Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch said from Hong Kong.

But Bequelin said rising tensions have the Party worried that instability could spread to other ethnic groups.

"The situation points to the wholesale failure of the Party's policies toward ethnic minorities -- that they are alienating and disenfranchising each to the point that they are willing to protest even when they know the consequences can be severe," he said.