Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Mongolia.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Mongolia. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Mongolia U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/mongolia/
[accessed 29 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT The NHRC, NGOs, and
defense attorneys reported that in an attempt to coerce or intimidate
detainees, authorities sometimes threatened detainees’ families, transferred detainees repeatedly, or placed them in
detention centers far from their homes and families, making access to legal
counsel and visits by family members difficult. Human rights NGOs and
attorneys reported obstacles to gathering evidence of torture or abuse. For
example, although many prisons and detention facilities had cameras for
monitoring prisoner interrogations, authorities often reported the equipment
was inoperable at the time of reported abuses. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Conditions in
prisons (which hold convicted criminals), arrest centers (which hold petty
offenders), and pretrial detention centers (for those awaiting trial) were sometimes
harsh due to lack of investment in the prison system; inadequate health care,
sanitation, and food; poor infrastructure; and lack of security and control. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/mongolia/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 18 May
2020] F3. IS THERE
PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR
AND INSURGENCIES? Mongolia has not been
involved in any armed conflict since 1939. However, there are sporadic
accounts of violence in the criminal justice system. While torture and other
cruel punishments are forbidden by law, there have been reports of such
techniques being employed by police to obtain confessions. Prison deaths
continue to be reported, and insufficient nutrition, heat, and medical care
remain problems in detention facilities. Conclusions and
recommendations of the Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/MNG/CO/1
(2011) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/mongolia2011.html [accessed 4 March
2013] Impunity for acts
of torture 9. The Committee is
concerned at reports that law enforcement officials and interrogators are not
always prosecuted and adequately punished for acts of torture and ill-
treatment. This was also referred to by the Special Rapporteur on the
question of torture, who stated that “impunity is the principal cause of
torture and ill treatment”. The Special Rapporteur concluded that torture
persists, particularly in police stations and pretrial detention facilities,
and that “the absence in the Criminal Code of a definition of torture in line
with the Convention and the lack of effective mechanisms to receive and
investigate complaints provides shelter to perpetrators” (ibid.) (arts. 1, 2,
4, 12 and 16). The State party is
urged to bring impunity to an end and ensure that torture and ill-treatment
by public officials will not be tolerated and that all alleged perpetrators
of acts of torture will be investigated and, if appropriate, prosecuted,
convicted and punished with penalties appropriate to the gravity of the
crime. The State party should ensure that efficient and independent
investigative mechanisms be established against impunity regarding torture
and ill-treatment. Article 44.1 of the Criminal Code, which stipulates that
“causing harm to the rights and interests protected by this Code in the
course of fulfilling mandatory orders or decrees shall not constitute a
crime”, should be immediately repealed. The State party legislation should
also clearly stipulate that a superior order may not be invoked as a
justification for torture. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 IMPUNITY Complaints of torture
and other ill-treatment against law enforcement officials did not, according
to available information, result in any convictions. As in previous years,
the government did not publish information and statistics on investigations,
prosecutions and convictions of law enforcement officials accused of torture
and other ill-treatment. TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT The government
passed a resolution in May on the implementation of recommendations issued by
UN treaty bodies. This included plans to amend the Criminal Code to define
torture as a crime in line with the UN Convention against Torture. The
working group, established under the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs in
2010 to draft amendments to the Criminal Code, appeared to make little
progress. The pre-trial detention facility 461, which opened in early 2011,
had installed video cameras in interrogation rooms but there were
insufficient safeguards or procedures in place to monitor and prevent misuse
of this equipment. A working group,
set up in June 2010 by the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Human Rights,
continued to investigate allegations of torture and other ill-treatment of Enkhbat Damiran and his lawyer.
Enkhbat Damiran was
kidnapped in France in 2003 and brought to Mongolia where he was charged with
the murder of Zorig Sanjaasuren,
a prominent pro-democracy activist and politician. Enkhbat
Damiran claimed he was tortured while in detention.
He died in 2007. His lawyer, Lodoisambuu Sanjaasuren (no relation to the victim), was also
arrested and convicted of exposing state secrets. UNFAIR TRIALS Lawyers and
government officials told Amnesty International that courts were corrupt and
unfair trials common – including those that used confessions extracted
through torture as evidence. The new pre-trial detention facility 461 and
others like it lacked provisions to ensure privacy for meetings with lawyers. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For more
articles:: Search Amnesty
International’s website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=mongolia+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 8 January 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/62653.htm [accessed 6 February
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/62653.htm [accessed 4 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law prohibits
such practices and reports of such actions have diminished; however, police
(especially in rural areas) occasionally beat prisoners and detainees, and
the use of unnecessary force in the arrest process was common. In June at the
invitation of the government, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture conducted
a fact-finding visit. At the end of his visit, he publicly expressed concern
about the persistence of incidents of torture, particularly in police
stations and pretrial detention facilities. The Special Rapporteur noted
favorably recent efforts by authorities to combat the problem, but said the
lack of an adequate legal framework to investigate and punish torture creates
a climate of impunity. In 2004 the prison administration completed the installation
of television monitoring systems in all 22 prisons, which contributed to a
significant decline in prison guard abuse of prisoners and detainees. While
the prison administration stated that there were no cases of abuse during the
year, there was at least one suspicious death which was under investigation
(see section 1.a.). Freedom House
Country Rating - Political Rights: 2 Civil Liberties: 2 Status: Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/mongolia [accessed 6 February
2013] LONG
URL ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 13 May
2020] The judiciary is independent,
but corruption among judges persists. Although the constitution prohibits
unlawful arrest and detention, the police force has been known to make
arbitrary arrests, hold detainees for long periods of time, and beat
prisoners. According to the U.S. State Department, P. Ganbayar,
a famous wrestler, died in March 2008 while in police custody. Ten police
officers were arrested and charged with premeditated murder for the deaths of
five people during riots following the June 2008 parliamentary elections. In
recent years, prisons have been outfitted with video-monitoring systems,
decreasing the incidence of beatings by guards. Nevertheless, deaths in
prisons continue to be reported, due largely to disease—often
tuberculosis—exacerbated by poor conditions like insufficient food, heat, and
medical care. The country’s
National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR) consists of three senior civil
servants nominated by the president, the Supreme Court, and the parliament
for terms of six years. The NCHR has criticized the government for police
abuses, poor prison conditions, lengthy detentions without trial, and other
failures to implement laws related to human rights. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century-
Mongolia", http://gvnet.com/torture/Mongolia.htm, [accessed
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