Mr. Turificacion Quisumbing
Chief of the Center of Human Rights
United Nations
United Nations Plaza
New York, NY 10017
Your Excellency Mr. Quisumbing,
We are writing to you on behalf of the Inner Mongolian Peoples Party, the only existing political organization of the Inner Mongolians --- the 3.7 million Mongols living under the colonial rule of Peoples Republic of China.
In April, 1997, the United Nations Human Rights Commission failed to approve a resolution condemning human rights violations in the Peoples Republic of China. The vote was the eighth straight year in favor of a country which continually violates all of the fundamental human rights, including the right to life , the right to liberty and freedom of movement , the right to equality before the law , the right to presumption of innocence till proven guilty , the right to appeal a conviction , the right to be recognized as a person before the law , the right to privacy and protection of that privacy by law , and the right to have freedom of thought, conscience, and religion , freedom of opinion and expression , freedom of assembly and association. Furthermore, with regard to the many ethnic groups in China, such as the Mongols , the Tibetans and the Uighurs, the Chinese government has additionally violated their rights to exist as an ethnic group.
The United Nations Human Rights Commission , as the worlds highest supervisor of Human Rights, should not encourage a country like China to continue its violation of human rights by letting it escape from international condemnation year after year.
The Inner Mongolians, suffering under Chinas brutal rule, are a major part of a great nation ---the Mongol nation. As a distinct ethnic group, the Inner Mongolians have the right to self-determination and should be born free and have all the fundamental rights as a human being. Furthermore, those Inner Mongolians should enjoy those rights without any kind of distinction based on race, color, language, religion, political or other opinion.
But today, for the Mongols in China, in addition to the deprivation of these basic rights, they have also been deprived the dignity of equal status as a human being with the ordinary Chinese people, just because they are Mongols. The language and the culture of the Mongols have been denigrated as barbaric, simply because they are different from that of the Chinese. The Mongols have been heavily persecuted simply because they have been trying to preserve their endangered cultural heritage. By contrast, many Chinese have been highly honored by the government for their achievement in promoting the Chinese culture. The pasturelands of the Mongols have been wantonly plowed and turned into deserts , and have even become nuclear dump sites simply because those lands are not inhabited by the Chinese. The natural resources of the Mongols have been taken away from them without any compensation simply because these resources belong to the Mongols. The crime of separatism has been designed specially to target the minorities, such as the Mongols. The first victims of ethnic genocide campaign carried out after the Nuremberg Trial were the Mongols in Inner Mongolia and there is still no international awareness regarding the campaign of genocide committed by the government of China during the years of 1947 to 1978.
Honorable Commissioner, we believe that the rights of the ethnic groups are as important as or even more important than the rights of the individual human being. In many cases, millions of people are suffering from the same human rights abuses merely for being a minority of a large nation. The Inner Mongolians, for example, will not have to suffer all the violations of their human rights if they enjoy the taste of freedom. The independent state of the Mongols---Mongolia is a powerful testimony.
Honorable Commissioner, the United Nations Human Rights Commission should not only be concerned with and monitor the human rights situation of the nations which are lucky enough to be the members of the United Nations, but should pay careful attention to the protection of those people , those ethnic groups which cannot yet enjoy the benefits of membership in the United Nations.
There are thousands of Wei Jingshengs and Wang Dans in Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Eastern Turkestan whom the Commission should be concerned about. Peace will not fall upon the Earth, unless these people have the rights they deserve.
Thank you very much,
Inner Mongolian Peoples Party
June 14, 1997, New York