Will Swanson's Blog

“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.

With independent media feeling the heat over their actions during the riots last week, I was pretty concerned about how the welfare of these people would be covered and in my searches I stumbled across this blog -

Mongolian Human Rights Blog

Fear of Violations of Human Rights

There is now great concern for the safety of 718 women, men and children arrested during the riots. Reports are being received from family members regarding the inhuman treatment and torture of detainees currently being held in detention.

Due to the limited media coverage and concerns for the human rights of the detainees, civil organisations within Mongolia are working together to advocate and ensure their ongoing welfare.

This blog has been set up as an alternative form of media in order to provide information on the current human rights issues in Mongolia. It is also hoped that the dissemination of this information will encourage transparency and accountability to ensure human rights are upheld during and after the current state of emergency.

… and theyre using my flickr images! So it seems like once again Mongolia is discovering even more gaps in their democratization process…

**Update**

I just recieved an email from the Human Rights under State of Emergency Monitoring and Protection Coalition (yes that is a mouthful…) detailing some allegations I mentioned above:

• • 30-50 people were kept in a small room of about 20 square meters, without sufficient air, people were also kept en masse in a detention center garage
  • Children and women were kept with adult men
  • The detainees were not allowed access to toilet facilities, which resulted in damage to their health
  • The detainees were not provided with necessary nutrition. For example, in some detention sites, people were not given food or water for a whole day while in other sites they were given a small piece of cookie with tap water on the first day and chloramine-tainted tea on the second day.
  • People who required medical attention were not provided with necessary assistance.
  • The detainees were not informed of their rights or the reason for their arrest
  • The families were not immediately notified about the arrests
  • The detainees were forced to give and sign statements under torture and duress
  • Television footage is being used as stand-alone evidence and repeatedly broadcast on the Mongolian National Public Television and Radio.

And what is really worrying is this:

Even after 5 days have passed since the initial arrests, there are over 70 people who have not been located and their family and friends are still looking for them.

I’ve uploaded the full version with details here in Microsoft Word 97-2003 format. You can subscribe to their email at informationmongolia@yahoo.com using the subject header ‘ADD ME’

This entry was posted on Monday, July 7th, 2008 at 5:55 pm. It is filed under Uncategorized and tagged with 2008, abuse, elections, freedom of speech, human rights, mongolia, mongolian human rights watch, protests, riots, ulaanbaatar, ulan bator. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.