Editor's Note:

Southern Mongolian News republishes this speech by Enghebatu Togochog, Director of the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC), delivered at the Second Congress of Tusgaar Buryad-Mongolia on September 17, 2026.

The speech highlights the shared history, cultural identity, and aspirations of Southern Mongolians and Buryad-Mongols.

Good morning, Sain baitsagaanuu! Dear Buryad brothers and sisters, distinguished delegates, and fellow Mongolians.

It is a great honor to address this Congress to show my support to our Buryad-Mongol independence movement on behalf of the Southern Mongolian people. Southern Mongolians and Buryad-Mongols are separated by political borders, but we are united by history, culture, language, and national identity. We are integral parts of the same historical Mongolian nation. The borders imposed upon us by great powers cannot erase this fundamental truth.

Our modern histories share painful parallels. Buryad-Mongols have endured Russian and Soviet domination, political repression, territorial division, Russification, and the weakening of their Mongolian national identity. Southern Mongolians have endured Chinese settler colonialism including waves of political purges, mass killings, forced assimilation, destruction of our traditional way of life, and systematic attacks on our language, culture, land, and national identity.

Today, we six million Southern Mongolians are subjected to an ongoing cultural genocide. Mongolian-language has been banned in all schools and social life. Our history is being rewritten, our nomadic civilization dismantled, and our distinct Mongolian identity forcibly replaced by the so-called “Chinese national identity”. We regard these policies as cultural genocide because their cumulative effect is to eliminate Southern Mongolians as a distinct people.

But we have not surrendered. In 2020, hundreds of thousands of Southern Mongolian students boycotted schools in defense of their mother tongue, joined by parents, teachers, herders, intellectuals, and ordinary citizens. It demonstrated that, after decades of repression and assimilation, our national consciousness remains alive.

Our Buryad brothers and sisters have likewise demonstrated throughout history that their aspiration for national survival and self-determination cannot simply be erased. Our struggles therefore speak to each other. Southern Mongolians seek the right to determine our own political future, including the aspiration for complete national independence. Buryad-Mongols must likewise have the freedom to determine their own future.

Southern Mongolians, Northern Mongolians, Buryads, Oirads, Kalmyks, and other Mongolian peoples are integral parts of one historical Mongolian nation. Today, we may live under different foreign domination and face different threats, but our survival depends upon remembering who we are and standing together. Division has been our historical weakness. Unity must become our strength. When Buryads stand with Southern Mongolians, and Southern Mongolians stand with Buryads, neither of our peoples stands alone.

Let us strengthen our solidarity and work together for the national freedom, national dignity and national independence of all Mongolian peoples.

Thank you. Bayarllaa

Enghebatu Togochog

Director, Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC)