China uses carrot & stick approach to tackle Inner Mongolia protests

Ever more intense security has been ordered up over the past week in response to protests believed to be the largest to sweep Inner Mongolia in the past 20 years. The protests started after the deaths of two Mongolians in clashes with Chinese and quickly spiralled into calls for ethnic rights,placing normally quiet Inner Mongolia along with Tibet and Xinjiang as border areas troubled by ethnic unrest.

Searches for terms “Hohhot’’ and “Inner Mongolia’’ on Sina Corporation’s popular Twitter-like Weibo service return the message: “According to relevant law and regulations,the search results are not shown.’’

In one of the cases that triggered protests,the state-run Xinhua News Agency said Monday that the Xilinhot Intermediate People’s Court will hold a murder trial for Chinese miner Sun Shuning for hitting and killing Yan Wenlong,who had led protests against mining.

The Inner Mongolia’s Communist Party chief promised students in Xilinhot city that authorities would punish perpetrators in that case and in one other,in which a Chinese truck driver hit and killed a Mongolian herder who with other herders was blocking coal trucks from intruding on their grazing lands.