Thousands of people have defied subzero temperatures in the capital of Mongolia to demonstrate against alleged corruption in the nation’s coal industry and rising inflation.
Protesters, many of them young people, rallied in Ulaanbaatar’s Sukhbaatar Square — home to the Government Palace — in minus 21 degrees Celsius (minus six degrees Fahrenheit) on Monday, demanding “justice” against corrupt officials and for the country’s parliament to be dismissed.
“Help us our country is collapsing,” read one protester’s sign.
Two herders told AFP they had travelled to the capital to join the protests.
“Basically doing nothing is not right. I think it is right that young people are angry,” Enkh Amidral, a father of three, told AFP, saying he wanted the government to “punish the thieves”.
“They seem to forget what they promised us — they promised us a better life. They are supposed to make things better,” a female student who gave her name as Bayarmaa said.
“But they aren’t doing anything, taking our money, filling their own bellies,” she added.
The police issued a dispersal order to the gathering at 9 p.m. local time (1300 GMT) after the situation became violent and there were altercations with protesters.
As a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, inflation has risen to 15.2 percent, angering protesters who are fed up with the nation’s failing economy.
Whistleblower allegations, however, that legislators with ties to the coal industry are part of a “coal faction” and have stolen sedimentary rock valued at billions of dollars have also stoked public outrage.
Over 30 officials, including the CEO of the state-owned coal mining company Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi, were announced to be under investigation for embezzlement by Mongolia’s anti-corruption agency in the middle of November.
The firm controls the Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi deposits, which contain 7.5 billion tons of coking coal — an essential ingredient in the steel-making process — and represent a key component of Mongolia’s state budget revenue. It is yet to comment on the allegations.
The implicated lawmakers are alleged to have leveraged their ownership of coal mines and transportation companies that move the fossil fuel across the border into China to make illegal profits.
