An American newspaper on Friday revealed that a journalist of hers was arrested and expelled from the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia while covering tensions over a new guideline that reduces the use of the Mongolian language in schools.
In a news report on Friday, the Los Angeles Times said the journalist was interrogated at a police station, grabbed by the neck and pushed into a cell, where she stayed for more than four hours, before being forced to leave the region.
A journalist was surrounded by plainclothes police officers at a school in Hohhot, a capital of Inner Mongolia, and placed in a vehicle that took her to a police station, according to the newspaper, which added that she was not allowed to call the United States Embassy. United.
“A policeman grabbed her by the neck with both hands and pushed her into a cell”, reads the same news.
Three government officials and a police officer then accompany her to a train station and observe the observation until she leaves Beijing.
The report comes at the end of a report Su wrote about protests and strikes on classes that broke out in Inner Mongolia this week, against a new bilingual education policy that protesters say threatens the Mongolian language in the region.
Inner Mongolia is a region with 25 million inhabitants, bordering Mongolia.
About 17% of the population is Mongolian, while Han, a majority ethnicity in China, account for 79%.
The policy, announced on Monday, before the start of the new school year, requires schools to use new textbooks in Chinese, replacing books in the Mongolian language.
Literature classes for elementary and high school students in schools that teach in the Mongolian language will start to adopt Chinese books and will be taught in Mandarin.
In the next year, the policy and morals course will also switch to Mandarin, as will history classes, starting in 2022. The remaining subjects, such as mathematics, will not change the language of instruction.
Opponents see the action as an attempt to force them to assimilate Han culture. They fear that their mother tongue may be erased over time.
The incident occurs at a time of broader tensions between the United States and China over their correspondents in each country.
The USA has designated several Chinese media outlets operating in its territory as foreign missions and has placed a limit on the number of visas that can be issued to its journalists, forcing them to reduce the size of their teams.
China retaliated by expelling US journalists who worked for three U.S. newspapers and demanded that several news agencies provide information similar to what is required of foreign missions in the United States.
