Chinese man sentenced to one year in jail for insulting Genghis Khan in Inner Mongolia
Don’t mess with Genghis
While Genghis Khan may have been dead now for nearly 800 years, he’s still not a man to be messed with.
Recently, a 19-year-old man surnamed Luo was sentenced to one year in prison for desecrating a portrait of the famous Mongol leader. On May 20th, Luo recorded a video of himself trampling all over the Great Khan image and uploaded that footage to Kuaishou, a popular livestreaming platform in China, where it went viral, attracting the attention of some who found the act offensive and called the police.
A local court in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, said that Luo had incited ethnic hatred and discrimination by stomping on the depiction of the Mongolian hero and world conqueror. There are estimated to be around 5.8 million ethnic Mongols living in China, that population is about double the number of Mongolians living in the actual country of Mongolia.
While the sentencing has been reported by Chinese state media, the original statement issued by the city’s public security bureau has been taken offline. Meanwhile, some comments criticizing the rather harsh ruling have been deleted from Weibo.
“If he had trampled on the Yellow Emperor’s portrait, would he be sentenced to several years?” reads one surviving comment. Another simply commented, “WTF?”
Genghis Khan has an unusual legacy in China as a “barbarian” who set in motion the fall of two Chinese dynasties and the founding of another by his grandson, Kublai Khan, which lasted for nearly a century. In the past, Mongolians have been angered by what they see as China attempting to steal away their national icon in order to appeal to ethnic minorities.
Back in 2006, China opened a new “mausoleum” in Inner Mongolia to honor Genghis Khan. At the time, the manager of the mausoleum had this to say about the conqueror’s nationality: “We define him as a great man of the Chinese people, a hero of the Mongolian nationality, and a giant in world history… Genghis Khan was certainly Chinese.”
About a decade later two British tourists were detained and deported from China for allegedly watching “terrorist propaganda,” however, they claimed that they were merely watching a BBC documentary about Genghis Khan in their hotel rooms in Inner Mongolia.
