A press under pressure

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s a journalist who depends on crowdfunding to do his stories, Budragchaa Serdamba is an outlier in the media industry, and especially the one in his country, Mongolia. The Central Asian nation, after all, is notorious for having a media industry burdened with vested interests, with many of its media companies openly showing their bias for whatever view is supported by their contracts with government institutions. 

Budragchaa goes against that norm. He chooses the stories he does, posts them on his website nuuts.mn, and people donate whatever amount they think is appropriate. It doesn’t seem to be a viable business model, but somehow Budragchaa has kept his website going—at least for now.

The 37-year-old journalist is currently waiting for the high court’s decision on a defamation case filed against him; the court recently suspended hearing on the case pending a final ruling by Mongolia’s Constitutional Court on the defamation clause of the country’s criminal law. Budragchaa, though, already lost in the lower and appellate courts. If the high court upholds the previous ruling, Budragchaa could be fined or, worse, placed under house arrest, which could mean he may have problems doing research for his stories.

Budragchaa, however, may still consider himself lucky. Prominent investigative journalist Unurtsetseg Naran is now languishing in the national women’s prison after an appeals court upheld a July 2024 ruling that came with a combined 4.9-year jail term. 

Another investigative journalist, Bayarmaa Ayurzana, could face a prison sentence if she is found guilty of “threatening to disseminate information that might cause serious damage” to Deputy Prime Minister Amarsaikhan Sainbuyan. 

In many other countries, members of the media also often find themselves in the crosshairs of authorities and suffer even worse consequences. But perhaps because most Mongolian journalists had been practicing self-censorship and seemed disinterested to rock the boat up until a few years ago, the country’s media sector had been generally ignored by authorities and was relatively calm for most of the last 25 years. 

Not surprisingly, Mongolians distrusted what was being produced by the country’s media because—as global media monitor Reporters Without Borders (RSF) notes—of their suspect quality and probable bias. In recent years, however, independent news websites began sprouting up and posting investigative reports on many topics. More and more people started to take notice of their work, including some prominent personalities who showed their displeasure over the reports by throwing the book at Mongolia’s new breed of journalists.

As a result, Mongolia’s rank in RSF’s annual World Press Freedom Index plunged from 68 out of 180 countries in 2021 to 109 in 2024. In its report on Mongolia, RSF says, “More than half of all defamation cases in Mongolia are brought against journalists and media outlets. Harsh financial penalties force them to censor themselves and curtail the development of independent and investigative media. Many cases of journalists accused of spreading false information are based on complaints by senior politicians, parliamentarians, civil servants or government agencies.”

Sending a warning

Media insiders and observers say that Unurtsetseg’s case in particular sets a dangerous precedent for journalists deemed by those in power to have crossed the line. At the very least, it is seen by many as a warning to other members of the press. 

Bayasgalan Luvsanbyambaa, one of five former journalists who were recently elected to parliament, tells Asia Democracy Chronicles (ADC): “The whole Mongolian media witnessed how brutal a court trial can be (because of Unurtsetseg’s case). On the surface, we look like we have press freedom, but in fact, everyone is in fear. I think they are punishing Unurtsetseg to make journalists afraid.”

Unurtsetseg’s lawyer Batsukh Orchirbat notes, “The appellate court ignored the fact that the Constitutional Court had (already) opened a discussion on the defamation clause although lawyers raised the point during the trial.” The clause, which had the high court pausing proceedings in Budragchaa’s case while the Constitutional Court took it up, is at the center of debates in Mongolia’s media community.

Unurtsetseg is the founder and chief editor of www.zarig.mn, which has one million followers in a country of three million people. She gained popularity for her reports on marginalized groups, violence in the army, and corruption in the state low-cost loan funding scheme to develop Mongolia’s manufacturing sector. 

By the time she was arrested and detained on Dec. 4, 2023 on charges that included spreading false information, Unurtsetseg had already been slapped with at least 16 defamation cases, all filed by politicians. She won most of them, however. 

At the time of her 2023 arrest, she was under investigation for yet another defamation case, as were nine other journalists. But charge upon charge against Unurtsetseg soon began piling up. 

Recounts her lawyer Batsukh: “She was under investigation by seven different law enforcement organizations such as police departments of three different districts, the Criminal Police Department and State Investigation Department, and the Independent Anti-Corruption Agency. Plus, the Tax Administration and Ministry of Health investigated Unurtsetseg.” 

All in all, the police opened 24 new cases against her while she was in pre-trial detention for two months. She was released in February 2024, but was put under house arrest and forbidden to continue her work as a journalist from home. By the end of May 2024, the police had whittled down her charges to five, including three counts of defamation, disclosure of personal vulnerable information, tax avoidance, money laundering, and obtaining a state secret file. 

Unurtsetseg’s lawyers were not present during the lower court trial as their request for it to be reset due to scheduling conflict was rejected. Her trials at both the lower and appellant courts were also closed-door ones, because the courts said her cases involved state secrets and sensitive personal information. She was found guilty of all charges by the lower court last July, and the ruling was upheld on appeal last November.

Singled out?

Most Mongolian journalists believe justice was not served in Unurtsetseg’s case. Ankhzul Tseden, founder and chief editor of tsakhiur.mn, remarks, “Several lawyers publicly have been speaking up and stating that Unurtsetseg’s tax avoidance is not worth jail time. The tax case was simply an excuse to punish the journalist and it makes me believe the court was influenced by a politician, a powerful one.” 

Unurtsetseg was sentenced to a year of house arrest for tax avoidance of MNT 57 million (US$16,500). She was also meted a prison sentence of six months for money laundering; under Mongolian law, spending the money that was supposed to be paid as income tax is money laundering. The court then converted her one-year house arrest, along with three months of the same punishment for defamation, into an equivalent prison term.

ADC analyzed a digital archive of open court orders at www.suukh.mn, where 35 tax-avoidance cases are available. Among these cases, only one—which involved forgery of documents and organized group criminal activity over a certain period—resulted in jail time. Moreover, those found guilty in these cases were ordered to pay the tax that they had failed to remit, which in effect eliminated the money-laundering charge.

Unurtsetseg was also handed another one-year sentence for obtaining state secrets even though her lawyer continues to insist that “no undeniable evidence” was presented to prove she had indeed done so. The document containing the supposed state secret was found in the car of zarig.mn’s marketing manager.

Comments lawmaker Bayasgalan: “The law is only effective on Unurtsetseg but ineffective when it comes to justice for others. A journalist was punished for obtaining the secret file but a government official who disclosed the file has gone unpunished. Unurtsetseg didn’t realize there was a secret file in her manager’s car.”

Yet another prison term, this time for two years, was meted on Unurtsetseg for publishing the past criminal history of an individual who had confessed to kidnapping and murdering a minor.  Most Mongolian media published similar reports, but only Unurtsetseg was haled to court for her report and punished under the relatively new Protecting Personal Information of Individuals law. 

Before she was jailed in July 2024, Unurtsetseg had told Agence France Presse that the individual’s father had informed the police that he learned of his son being in prison from only zarig.mn.

Deciding to stay or leave

In its profile of Mongolia that was last updated in June 2024, the intergovernmental organization International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) says that while the country is among “the world’s top 25 percent of performers in Elected Government and Freedom of Movement,” it has seen “significant declines in Civil Liberties, Economic Equality, Freedom of Expression, Free Political Parties, and Freedom of the Press” compared to five years prior. 

International IDEA adds, “This is likely a result of weak political parties operating in a dominant-party system, coupled with recent efforts by the government to restrict the country’s civic space.”

The five former journalists now in parliament say that they will work on amendments to the laws on state secrets and defamation. Since last year, the Ministry of Justice has also been working to update the press freedom law, a move that has been welcomed by RSF. The current crackdown on the media, however, has unnerved many Mongolian journalists, some of whom are now considering leaving the profession altogether.

Others are not ready to do that just yet. Munkhchimeg Davaasharav, a freelance journalist who writes for Western media, is one of them. She wants to take a break from journalism for a while, though, she says.

“I’ve been hearing journalists around me say they don’t want to stay in journalism anymore because we have witnessed that anyone could be thrown to prison for some excuse such as a secret file or tax matter,” Munkhchimeg says. “This is enabled by laws that can be used against certain individuals. Before Unurtsetseg, a famous poet was also imprisoned and found guilty of being affiliated with a foreign spy. Both these cases were held behind closed doors and we were not told the details.”

Meanwhile, Budragchaa of nuuts.mn looks far from quitting. In fact, he seems to have kept busy while waiting to hear from the high court regarding his defamation case. Just last Feb. 12, another video was uploaded on his website. The video is about a coal mining project in Mongolia’s southern Gobi Desert. A short text accompanying it begins: “Let me tell you the story of how political and business groups stole the ‘Ukhaa Khudag’ deposit …” ◉