Minister of Road and Transport Development S. Byambatsogt presented the decisions made at today’s regular meeting of the Cabinet.

He said, “At its meeting today, the Cabinet supported the issue of establishing an agreement with the United States in air transport. With the establishment of the agreement, an opportunity will be opened up to conduct direct flights between Mongolia and the United States after one-year preparatory work is completed within 2023. Thus, it will become possible to conduct regular flights to the United States in 2024.

For Mongolia, the United States is the third most sought travel destination after Beijing and Seoul. In 2019, more than 60 thousand people spent over USD 40 million to travel between the two countries through Beijing and Seoul.

“Establishment of the agreement is believed to serve as an important impetus to increase the number of tourists and decrease the cost of traveling between the two countries”, added the Minister.

The government action plan includes building new energy sources to meet the growing electricity demand. From this perspective, it was decided to make new energy sources available in three main scopes:

To increase and expand the capacity of existing energy sources.

To build new sources with pulverized coal combustion technology.

To make renewable energy sources available.

The construction project of the Tavantolgoi Thermal Power Plant (TPP) with a capacity of 450 MW is one of the significant projects to build new energy sources that are operated with pulverized coal combustion technology. In April 2020, a resolution was issued by the Government that it will finance the project through its own resource. According to the resolution, Erdenes Tavantolgoi JSC will allocate 30 percent of the financing through owning shares of the plant and the remaining 70 percent will be financed by a loan through the government’s loan guarantee. In this framework, the government submitted its request for a debt guarantee to the State Great Khural. However, the State Great Khural refused to issue the debt guarantee due to the debt ceiling, stopping the project.

The Minister of Energy, B. Choijilsuren, stated that the Russian side has put forth a proposal to cooperate with Mongolia to continue the project.

Specifically, some Russian commercial banks have expressed their interest in financing the project. According to the Ministry, the tender for Tavantolgoi TPP will be announced before January, and the participants will be selected and contracted by the end of May 2023. It is planned to commence construction in the second half of next year and to be commissioned in the second half of 2026. Furthermore, Minister B. Choijilsuren highlighted that no offtake agreements will be established for this project.

Two days ago, hundreds of demonstrators angered by allegations of corruption linked to Mongolia’s coal trade with China tried to force their way into the State Palace in the capital, demanding dismissals of officials involved in the scandal.

The demonstration of angry Mongolians, mostly youngsters, is continuing for fourth day on Wednesday (7 December) when some of protesters stripped naked in -15 Celsius in Ulaanbaatar city.

Therefore, Mongolian Prime Minister L.Oyun-Erdene met with protesters in front of State House (parliament house). He vowed to solve the ‘stolen coal’ case and formed a working group including protesters and officials.

L.Oyun-Erdene says ‘ I am grateful to the people who are demanding to reveal the theft of coal, a mining product that is the main component of Mongolia’s economy. Thank you to every citizen who expressed their opinion in the central square today. Fighting coal theft is not easy. I know that the society is being provoked by the real fraudsters who embezzled the bonds issued in the name of the Development Bank. We were able to reveal all this in a short period of time. We will continue to move forward. I will work together with the Government, the Parliament and the President of Mongolia to solve the issue of coal theft and get behind it.

Mining Shared Value, a non-profit initiative of Engineers Without Borders Canada, has announced that twelve mining companies have now adopted the Mining Local Procurement Reporting Mechanism (LPRM), to report on a total of thirty-four mine sites across nineteen countries.

The LPRM is a publicly available framework of twenty-two disclosures, developed by MSV and commissioned by the German development agency GIZ, with support from Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Growing use of the reporting framework is happening amidst increased focus on local sourcing and supply chain due diligence in the rush for green energy minerals.

Ivanhoe Mines became the first company to implement the LPRM in 2019. Now a total of twelve companies are using it, including Freeport-McMoRan, New Gold, and Lundin Gold.

Solaris Resources is the first exploration company in the world to use the LPRM and reports on its Warintza project in Ecuador.

Earlier this year, Onyen Corp. also announced the addition of the LPRM to its ESG reporting software, offering user companies the ability to report in accordance with the disclosures, while eliminating duplicative reporting and centralizing data collection and management.

The LPRM is designed to promote and standardize information sharing on local procurement at the site level and aims to identify opportunities for improving transparency of spending, as well as policies and systems that support procurement from local suppliers.

As procurement of goods and services represents the largest payment from a mining operation to a host country – often exceeding direct wages and taxes combined – local procurement can be a critical lever for the creation of short and long-term benefits in mining communities, MSZ said in a media release.

“As demand grows for minerals required for the energy transition, mining sector procurement of goods and services has significant potential to drive economic and social impacts for mining host countries, and it can be instrumental in strengthening a company’s social licence to operate”, MSV managing director Jeff Geipel said in the statement.

“The Mining LPRM is a publicly available reporting framework that helps companies refine their approach to local procurement and provides practical information to host country suppliers and other stakeholders,” Geipel said.

The LPRM encourages companies to disclose information on policies and commitments, spending on goods and services sourced from local suppliers, development programs and support made available to local suppliers, as well as supply chain due diligence efforts.

ULAANBAATAR, Mongolia (AP) — Protesters angered by allegations of corruption linked to Mongolia’s coal trade with China tried to force their way into the State Palace in the capital, demanding dismissals of officials involved in the scandal.

The U.S. Embassy in Ulaanbaatar issued an alert Monday saying that several hundred protesters had gathered in the freezing cold in the city’s Sukhbaatar Square during the weekend and marched to the presidential residence.

The demonstrators chanted and sang, stamping their feet to stay warm. They were demanding that the government hold officials accountable for the alleged theft of 385,000 tons of coal from stockpiles on Mongolia’s border with China.

Most of the demonstrators were college students and others in their 20s and 30s, a few bundled up in traditional thick robes, and some holding up placards.

“If you don’t love your country, why be a citizen?” said one. A black board held up by another said, “We want to live with dignity in our country.”

“If the citizens rise up, the feast is over!” said another.

The allegations center on coal from the Tavan Tolgoi region in the south Gobi desert that is being mined by state-owned Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi and two other companies. Local media reports said ETT, which is listed on Mongolia’s stock exchange, has been placed under state supervision as the government’s Independent Authority Against Corruption investigates.

Foreign sales of Mongolia’s vast mineral wealth, coal and other resources are a perennial source of conflict for the country, where nearly one in three people live in poverty. Adding to the frustrations, the pandemic has left many Mongolians struggling to make ends meet, with inflation topping 15%.

Mongolia transitioned to democracy in the early 1990s after six decades of communism. Peaceful protests are not uncommon in Ulanbaatar, where about half of Mongolia’s 3.2 million people live. In April, thousands of young protesters demonstrated in Sukhbaatar Square.

China is the destination of most of landlocked Mongolia’s exports of coal, cashmere, livestock and other resources.

In Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson who was asked about allegations that coal was stolen for sale inside China said she was unaware of that “specific situation.”

“China is a friendly neighbor of Mongolia, and we believe the Mongolian government will properly handle and investigate the matter. The competent Chinese authority will provide necessary assistance as requested by the Mongolian side in accordance with laws and regulations,” Mao said.

There are reports that 35 thousand people were executed in Mongolia during the years of political repression, but the number of the repressed probably exceeded 100,000, said Prof. Sc.D O. Batsaikhan.

It was noted during his speech that the victims of political repression were mainly state and social dignitaries and Buddhist monks.

In 1929, Mongolia had a population of 721 thousand. 17,000 of the 25,000 Mongolians who were condemned for false political crimes and executed between 1937 and 1940 were Buddhist monks.

In August 1922, D. Bodoo, the first prime minister of the revolutionary period, and 14 others were executed without trial after confessing under torture by Soviet agents to conspiring to overthrow the government. Two years later, S. Danzan, one of the founding members of the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party (MPRP) was executed during the Third Party Congress for representing "bourgeois interests".

In 1928, several prominent MPRP members including A. Danzan, J. Tseveen, Ts. Dambadorj, and N. Jadambaa, were imprisoned or exiled in a widescale purge of suspected rightwingers as the country launched its "Leftist Period" of more rapid collectivization, land expropriation, and persecution of the Buddhist Church. After those drastic measures resulted in popular uprisings throughout the country in 1932, several of the MPRP's most hard-line leftists including Z. Shijee, U.Badrakh, and Prime Minister Ts. Jigjidjav were blamed, officially expelled from the party, and later executed during the Great Repression.

In 1933–34, in what is viewed as a dress rehearsal for the repressions of 1937–1939, MPRP General Secretary J. Lkhumbe and other MPRP elements, particularly Buryat-Mongols, were falsely accused of conspiring with Japanese spies. Over 1,500 people were implicated and 56 were executed.

Statistical documents prepared by the State Commission on Rehabilitation reveal some heart-breaking numbers. Within the two years between 1937 and 1939, the institute called the Extraordinary Commission falsely charged 25 thousand and 824 people for political crimes, and the court sentenced 20 thousand of them to execution by shooting.

In addition to countless lives that were lost during the repression, some of Mongolia’s cultural and religious heritages were also lost along with 1,000 churches, added O. Batsaikhan.

“False confessions obtained through torture have not entirely stopped in our nation. Additionally, it is necessary to make regulations for the National Commission for Human Rights to simultaneously review information related to torture and false confessions, to legalize the methodology for calculating emotional damage, and to enhance the knowledge and attitude of the judicial and investigative authorities toward human rights”, said B. Enkhbold, a member of the National Commission for Human Rights.

The National Commission for Human Rights presented the State Great Khural with 413 proposals along with 21 reports on the status of human rights and freedoms in Mongolia. The prohibition against torture was cited in 13 of these reports.

To establish cooperation with governmental organizations that carry out comparable functions in other nations, the State Commission on Rehabilitation invited representatives of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Korea led by Lee Jae-sun and organized a discussion themed “Human Rights and Repression” to exchange experience in eliminating the harmful effects and consequences of political repression.

Established in 2005, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Korea is responsible for investigating incidents in Korean history that occurred from Japan's rule of Korea in 1910 through the end of authoritarian rule in South Korea.

The body has investigated numerous atrocities committed by various government agencies during Japan's occupation of Korea, the Korean War, and the authoritarian governments that ruled afterwards. The commission estimates that tens of thousands of people were executed in 1950. The victims include political prisoners, civilians who were killed by foreign troops, and civilians who allegedly collaborated with communist North Korea or local communist groups.

Professor Lee Jae-seung of the law department at Konkuk University gave a presentation on "Korea's efforts to promote reconciliation and peace" during the aforementioned discussion. Stating that the Republic of Korea has now become a stable and successful country despite the hardships of feudalism, colonialism, dictatorship, division, war, and the communist system in the past, he underscored that it is necessary for the regional and international community to accelerate the joint efforts to solve the issues of Korean Peninsula.

In 2005-2010, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Korea investigated and resolved 11,175 applications submitted by the citizens, issuing compensation of about USD 75,000 to the families of the victims.

As of December 2021, the State Commission on Rehabilitation rehabilitated 31,460 victims in Mongolia, and since 1998, compensation of MNT 6 billion 589 million had been granted.

Chairperson of the State Commission on Rehabilitation S. Odontuya noted during the discussion that it is regrettable that the protection of human rights and the avertance of abuses are not fully fulfilled while expressing her willingness to intensify cooperation with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Korea to effectively protecting human rights.