Hada

I saw the eclipse of 1997 March 9 through a snowstorm near the northern edge of Mongolia.  These objects –

– I’ll tell later what they are; for now, consider the little glazed earthenware bottle.  It is a snuff bottle moulded with Mongolian symbols for long life, happiness, and eight other concepts, and was presented to me at a banquet by Mr. Namsrain Galbadrakh, governor of Töv Aimag province and mayor of Zuunmod Khot; I had been taken there from  Ulaan Baatar by a group called the Liberal Women’s Brain Pool.  It’s true.

Mongolia is the great nation between Russia and China, having avoided annexation by either of them.  Except for a strip, about the size of South Africa, called by its natives Southern Mongolia and by its Chinese rulers Inner Mongolia.  It is one of the three huge non-Chinese nations incorporated into China, the others being Xinjiang and Tibet.

Hada was a scholar and bookshop owner in Hohhot (Chinese: Huhehaote), the capital of Southern Mongolia.  (Many Mongols use single names.)  He peacefully advocated the rights of Mongolians in their own country.  For this he was arrested in 1995 (on Human Rights Day, December 10!).  After a year of detention, and a closed-doors trial with no lawyer or even right to defend himself, he was convicted of “splittism,” “conspiring to overthrow the government,” and “espionage,” and sentenced to 15 years.

He was imorisoned 400 miles from his home.  If his wife Xinna managed to visit, she was often just turned away,  She was herself harassed as she tried to keep their bookshop open; very courageously she sent statements to the outside world.  The kinds of ill treatment Hada suffered are indescribably numerous; they broke his health.

At his release date in 2010, he was instead moved under armed guard to a secret location, which turned out to be a “black jail” in Hohhot, for a further four years.

In December 2019, he was still not freed to rejoin his wife and son, but was moved to an apartment owned and run by the Chinese Public Security Bureau.

Our Amnesty International group worked relentlessly on Hada’s case for many years.

Still faithfully running a Free Hada Now! campaign are our friends SMHRIC, the Southern Mongolia Human Rights Information Center, in New York.  They are holding a conference about Hada on February 1 at New Brunswick, New Jersey, near Rutgers University.

We have an appeal for Hada at our “Ready-Made Human Rights Letters” website.

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