A Chinese man has been sentenced to one year in jail by a court in the Inner Mongolia for destroying a portrait of the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan and inciting hatred.
The man, identified by his surname Luo, had shared a video of him stomping on a portrait of the Mongol warlord in May on a popular video-sharing platform Kuaishou.
He was charged with inciting ethnic hatred and ethnic discrimination and disturbing social stability by the prosecutors in Ordos, a city in Inner Mongolia, after a video of him stomping the picture of the founder of Mongol empire went viral, a media report said on Friday.
He pleaded guilty and said he would not appeal when appearing at Ejin Horo People’s Court in Inner Mongolia on last Tuesday, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
The video was shot in a Mongolian yurt (tent) in Yinchuan, capital of north western China’s Ningxia province, and went viral on social media in the following days, it said.
Police in Inner Mongolia said that they had received complaints from residents and deemed the video had caused disruption to society .
Mongol Empire founder Genghis Khan remains a revered figure among many ethnic Mongols.
He had united the warring Mongol tribes before establishing an empire by conquering large areas of China and central Asia.
His conquests also laid the foundation for China’s Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) founded by his grandson Kublai Khan.
