Earthblog

Photographs and Essay by Julie Larson

Deep in the Gorkhi-Terelj National Park in central Mongolia, a 70-year-old man proudly pointed to a black dot on his index finger, eager to tell me its significance: he had voted in the national election.

It was June 29, 2008, near the heart of Mongolia. The man sold jewelry to travelers from a tiny kiosk located near the base of a rock formation called Turtle Rock. After 70 years, I could only imagine the remarkable changes this man has seen in his homeland.

The Mongolian people have lived through a tumultuous history – from the Huns and Turks, to the great Genghis Khan, or Chinggis Khaan as they call him. In more recent times, the Mongolians have contended with Chinese and Soviet rule. In 1990, with the deterioration of Soviet communist rule, Mongolia underwent a democratic revolution. The revolution resulted in the formation of a multi-party parliamentary government, the creation of a constitution in 1992, and the introduction of a free press.

Mongolia’s first free election in 1990 ushered in the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP), the former communist party. The first noncommunist government was elected in 1996, but the MPRP regained power again in the 2000 elections.

The June 2008 legislative election results awarded the MPRP a majority of parliamentary seats. The opposing Democratic Party, claiming a fraudulent vote tally, publicly challenged the election results. The Democratic Party’s claims turned a peaceful protest in front of the MPRP headquarters on July 1, 2008, into a deadly riot. While Mongolia has endured political unrest for years, this use of violence was quite uncommon.

The MPRP headquarters was gutted by a fire set by protestors hurling bottles of alcohol through the windows of the building. Police, suited in full riot gear, attempted to control the riot by firing rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowd and using their batons when in close range. As vehicles were set ablaze nearby, the MPRP headquarters was looted and the fire spread to the nearby Mongolian Modern Art Gallery and the performing arts auditorium. Arson was also reported at the headquarters of three Mongolian newspapers: Hummuussiin Amidral, Humuus and Unuudriin Mongol. The violence left five people dead and a reported 710 people were detained. President Enkhbayar declared a state of emergency and Mongolian tanks rolled through the capital city.

“As part of the declaration [the president] ordered all television stations off the air except Mongolian National Broadcasting (MNB) which is ostensibly a public station, not a state run station,” said Brian White, the resident director of the American Center for Mongolian Studies in Ulaanbaatar. “This continued until the declaration expired 4 days later, and then all other stations came back on the air.”

The Mongolian people were particularly interested in the 2008 election because it effectively decided who controls the development of Mongolia’s wealth of natural resources. Mongolia’s countryside is rich in mineral resources, especially copper. The extraction of these resources is expected to generate significant wealth. Whoever controls these national resources is projected to amass considerable power and riches. The Democratic Party believes that corporations should be given the right to develop the mineral deposits, while the MPRP intends to maintain government control of the resources. There is a considerable amount of money at stake for the people of Mongolia and the MPRP as worldwide demand for copper increased prices to unprecedented levels.

Mongolia’s copper mining epicenter, Erdenet, is located north of the nation’s capital. The city’s architecture and local cuisine is reminiscent of the Soviet communist past, with square buildings, vodka and Borsch. To learn more about how Mongolia’s nomadic herding population views the country’s transition to democracy and freedom of the press, I visited a tourist ger camp, just northwest of Erdenet.

Nestled into the rolling green hills, the camp is established near a nomadic herding family who lives one quarter of the year in the valley. The patriarch of the family is named Tumen Nasan. An older gentleman, Nasan, has raised livestock his entire life, mostly during communist rule. Under the Soviet communist rule, Nasan said he was only allowed to own “16 livestock, including 12 sheep or goats, two horses, and two cows.” He earned a living by herding the government-owned animals. Since 1990, livestock has been privatized, and Nasan now owns over 1,000 heads of livestock – 100 horses and 900 sheep and goats. He has obtained the title of “Myangat Malchin,” or “greatest herder” for having over 1,000 head of livestock. While his number of livestock and lavishness of his horse saddles can be used to gauge Nasan’s wealth in the nomadic community, he earns most of his income from raising prize-winning racehorses. Nasan believes that he and his family have benefited greatly from Mongolia’s transition to a free market, but he is apprehensive about the nation’s politics.

When asked what he thought of the riots in Ulaanbaatar, Nasan suggested that the individuals who took part in the rioting were young adults who had been abandoned and forced to live on the streets of the capital city when the Soviets pulled out of Mongolia in 1990. He believes these youth grew up without a formal education, and they consequently blame the former communist party (MPRP) for their plight. Nasan had watched coverage of the riots in Ulaanbaatar through satellite television.

Through Mongolia’s transition to democracy, the Mongolian Constitution has served as a guide for freedom of the press and government transparency, but these practices have not been effectively enforced. While the Mongolian Constitution promises the right of the people to obtain information and distribute it freely, journalists’ experiences have illuminated a severe lack of effective law enforcement. The Freedom House organization’s rating of Mongolia’s freedom of the press has been declining since the nation’s democratic revolution. The Freedom House originally rated the nation’s media as “free” in 1994 through 2002, but has rated the country as “partially free” since 2002. Censorship laws enacted to reduce access to government information are greatly jeopardizing the freedom of the press in Mongolia, and consequently the stability of the democracy. This censorship ranges from harassment and physical threats of harm, to tax audits and legal action (mainly slander and libel lawsuits).

The freedom of Mongolia’s press remains in a precarious position. During Soviet communist rule, the Mongolian media was closely regulated, producing state-run newspapers and local government radio and television programming. Since the late 1990s, Mongolia’s media landscape has expanded dramatically, with the development of an estimated 340 media outlets and the introduction of Internet-based news. Media development has progressed substantially within the nation of 2.9 million people, but the freedom of the press remains in jeopardy. Mongolia is currently facing two major challenges in the pursuit of an independent, ethical media: government censorship and a lack of professional ethical standards.

An editor at the UB Post, an English language weekly paper in Ulaanbaatar described how the newspaper industry in Mongolia generally operates. He requested that his name not be used. According to the editor, many heads of newspapers have familial ties with the mine owners and heads of state. These associations then dictate what news the paper publishes about Mongolia’s lucrative mining industry and the government. Additionally, he has found that practicing journalists receive very little education in their profession, and are not held to strict standards of ethical journalism.

In 2007, UNESCO conducted an analysis of Mongolia’s media ethics. According to the report, “Fifteen years since Mongolia’s move to democracy, there is still little to no understanding of how to manage and grow an independent and balanced media outlet that exists for the sake of providing free and independent information or for the sake of being a business in itself, without having to depend on political and/or business support.”

The report documented numerous infractions against Mongolian journalists who published investigative reports on government and mining actions. “In June, 2006, [a female journalist] reported on the fate of privatization vouchers for 9,000 employees of the Erdenet mining industry. After the television program, unknown people threatened [the journalist] over the phone. The director of the Erdenet brokerage company, which held the vouchers, also warned the journalist, ‘It is a very complicated issue, you could be killed.’ In July, 2006 she was beaten by unidentified perpetrators, and was hospitalized for treatment.”

The complex transition from communism to democracy has also divided the people of Mongolia from one uniform social class, into an upper and a lower class. While visiting the steppe of the Gobi Desert, I asked a young Mongol, Erkhembaatar Tseenyambuu, about his perception of how the country and the people have changed since the fall of communism. Tseenyambuu’s family owns a tourist camp near Dalanzadgad in the southern part of the country. The camp is comprised of a main dining facility, a shower building and a cluster of gers (traditional Mongolian round houses, also called yurts).

Although Tseenyambuu was born in 1985 and does not remember everyday life under Soviet communist rule, he has learned a great deal through his parents’ experiences. Personally, he has “seen much change in recent years, with the gap between the rich and the poor widening.” But Tseenyambuu believes his family is doing well. He has studied abroad in Japan and plans to continue his education of the Japanese culture. With democratic rule, he said, “students can study wherever they want to. The internet is also beneficial – it’s how we get our news [in the Gobi].” In the future, Tseenyambuu would like to maintain the family tourism business, but for now, he is focused on his formal education.

The transition from a uniform social class into an upper and lower class is evident throughout Mongolia’s populous capital city and the sparsely populated countryside. My translator Namuun Batnavch explained, “before 1990 everyone was of the same social class – they owned nothing. In 1990, the privatization of factories and properties, and start of trade with China established large companies and corporations. When the state-owned factories were privatized, they distributed stock options to the people on red and blue paper. They gave everyone the stock options, but most people didn’t know how to trade them and just kept them at home.” This rapid transition into a free market economy with democratic ideals posed opportunities for many Mongolians, but was detrimental for those who were unable to adapt. “Most people didn’t know how to survive in a democratic country,” said Batnavch. “Smart people picked up the opportunity, but those who did not recognize the market or realize the period went into a lower social class.”

Driven by a simultaneous fusion of nationalism, tradition, modernization and globalization, Mongolia is undergoing a tremendous evolution – unparalleled anywhere else in the world today. With corrupted global mining interests and the challenge of integrating the nomadic herding population’s needs with the needs of those who reside in the cities, Mongolia has reached a pivotal developmental crossroads. It is a land of ancient history where the winds of the steppes whisper history and the chatter of satellite television fills a ger. Whether desired or not, Mongolia is in the vortex of change that will shape the future of a free press and the future of this fragile democracy.