Good afternoon,

My name is Namulun Togochog. I am a second-generation Southern Mongolian born here in New York. It is my privilege to be here today to join our friends and supporters from Southern Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkistan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics.

As you all know, the 2022 Winter Olympics will be officially starting in Beijing tomorrow despite strong protests and various forms of boycotts by freedom-loving people around the world. This means the authoritarian regime of China has been rewarded again for its domestic human rights abuses and global hegemonic expansionism.

The past and present of the occupied nations of Southern Mongolia, Tibet and East Turkistan testify to the fact that the Chinese regime is a colonial regime of extreme brutality, whose ultimate goal is to completely wipe these occupied nations off the face of the earth. In Southern Mongolia, 70 years of Chinese colonial occupation not only took away the right of political autonomy that was promised to the Southern Mongolians by the Communist regime, but has also denied the most basic right to survive as a distinct people.

Today, learning and using their mother tongue and practicing their traditions and way of life have become a crime in Southern Mongolia. Following the crackdown of the popular uprising in Southern Mongolia in 2020, the Chinese colonial regime has become increasingly oppressive, incriminating those who assert their Mongolian identity. The Mongolian language has been removed from all schools and educational systems, Mongolian books and publications have been banned, street signs, building and sculptures with even a hint of Mongolian identity have been taken down and destroyed, clauses and articles of the Nationality Minority Autonomy Law regarding the right to use and develop national minority languages have been declared unconstitutional and were arbitrarily removed, and those who are perceived as harboring a national sentiment are forced into the training of the “Firm Inculcation of the Chinese Nationality Common Identity”; this is nothing but a wholesale cultural genocide, aiming at the total erasure of the Mongolian identity and Mongolian people from Southern Mongolia.

China’s active genocide and crimes against humanity in East Turkistan and religious repression and cultural eradication in Tibet are well documented. China’s abuse of human rights does not stop here. Today, the freedom and democracy of Hong Kong is taken away; free and sovereign nation Taiwan is being targeted. Neighboring nations like India, Japan, Mongolia and Nepal are harassed and bullied.

In the face of China’s increasing authoritarianism home and growing expansionism abroad, we as citizens of free and democratic world must stand up to urge the international community to hold the Chinese regime accountable for its atrocities committed in Southern Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkistan and elsewhere.

Thank you.