“Hey, where’d everyone go?”
Concerns are beginning to spread over the welfare of over 700 men, women and children that were imprisoned in the aftermath of last weeks deadly riots.
While information has been sketchy due to the enforced ‘media blackout’, I’ve heard reports of people being beaten, tortured and starved (how well this can be documented and certified is another thing considering the current situation). One friend who has worked in prisons here asked the question ‘Where would they put everyone?“, there simply isn’t enough room in the UB gaols to hold over 700 fresh prisoners.
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The training wheels are off in a fledgling democracy
Here are some final thoughts on the events of this week, tomorrow I should probably move onto more mundane things.
From my perspective it feels as though Mongolians are finally coming to terms with what it means to be a democratic country, and hopefully it will act as a counterweight to the rushing spiral to chaos that many older Mongolians feel the country is heading into. By this I mean the warnings that I’ve heard for the young people – the lack of rules and norms that govern the national character, the new definition of freedom, and the downside of democracy.
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Election held, dead bird falls from sky
Yesterday was Mongolia’s national elections, I appreciated the rule that all campaigning must stop 48 hours before the elections. By Friday afternoon the billboards were coming down, the nasty tv commercials were gone and people who had been knocking on my door up to 4 and 5 times a day had gone back to their day jobs.
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