China seizes and takes back doctor from Mongolia

(TibetanReview.net, Oct26, 2009) Police from Chinese-ruled Inner Mongolia have, with help from the local police, seized and taken away from independent Outer Mongolia on Oct 3 a doctor of Tibetan medicine who was seeking UN asylum there with his wife and daughter. He had left Inner Mongolia after being involved in a series of disputes with the Chinese authorities over the right to maintain the Mongolian and Tibetan characteristics of a medical school he had set up in Ordos city.

Four Chinese police officers sent from China accompanied by more than 10 Mongolian police detained Batzangaa, his wife Bayanhuaar, and their nine-year old daughter, reported Radio Free Asia online Oct 21. The doctor, 35-year-old Batzangaa, was taken into custody as he stepped out of the UN High Commission for Refugees office building in Ulaanbaatar and was whisked away to Ordos city in Inner Mongolia on the same day. No deportation proceedings of any kind were held, New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) was cited as saying.

Batzangaa’s wife, released from detention afterwards with her daughter but placed under house arrest, was notified of her husband’s formal arrest on Oct 8.

Batzangaa had developed a network of traditional Mongolian-Tibetan medical practitioners around Inner Mongolia and had, in 2001, set up the Ordos Mongol-Tibetan Medical School in Dongsheng. The school enrolled more than 1,000 Mongolian students who began practicing Mongolian medicine, providing affordable, sometimes even free, medical treatment to poverty-stricken rural Mongolian communities. He later set up an affiliated hospital with the coordination of Henan County Mongol Tibetan Hospital in Khukhnuur province.

SMHRIC has cited official documents as showing the authorities placed the school under surveillance, alarmed by its growing ties with Tibetans and Mongolians, and cancelled its land lease.

The report also cited the Chairman of Inner Mongolian People's Party Xi Haiming as saying the Chinese government was anxious to stamp out any cultural ties between Mongolians and Tibetans following last year’s uprising protests across the Tibetan Plateau.

"I think that this case is very political, because at the beginning of this dispute the authorities were saying that it had nothing to do with money, that it wasn't an economic problem," Xi was quoted as saying. "They are too sensitive about the use of the word 'Tibetan’."