PENALTY

MONGOLIA HONOURS
HUMAN LIFE AND DIGNITY
Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj 1
I am glad to be part of the movement away from the death penalty,
and I am confident that this book will be an indispensable reference
to national leaders working to advance a moratorium on the imposition
of the death penalty and its eventual abolition.
“WE CANNOT
REPAIR ONE DEATH
WITH ANOTHER.”
—Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj
In 2010 Mongolia announced a moratorium
on executions as a first step
towards abolition of the death penalty.
Our decision received acclamation
internationally and set the standard for
other countries in the “worst executioner”
region. It was a dramatic decision. No known human society
has been fully able to prevent humans from killing one another. Every
community demands from its state severe punishment of criminals.
Yet states have the ability to stop taking citizens’ lives. None of the
abolitionist countries repealed the death penalty under pressure from
public opinion. But the number of countries that have abolished this
punishment grows year by year.
Mongolia is a dignified country, and our citizens are dignified people.
As president, I encouraged my people to end the death penalty, which
degrades our dignity. I said I wanted to be a president who can tell his
citizens: “I will not deprive you of your life under any circumstances,
knowingly, on behalf of the state.” Our people say that a human life is
more precious than all the wealth that the Earth can carry. The road
that a democratic Mongolia takes should be clean and bloodless.
Mongolians have suffered enough from the death sentence. Between
October 1937 and April 1939, in 51 sessions of the Special Full-Power
Committee, which then functioned in place of the courts, 20,474
Mongolian citizens were sentenced to death. In just one session, a mass
death sentence for 1,228 people was issued, including eight women.
1 Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj is president of Mongolia. This article draws on the statement he made at
the Leadership and Moving Away from the Death Penalty event at the United Nations in New
York on 25 September 2014.
Mongolia was one of the few countries to re-introduce the death
penalty. In 1953, the Presidium of the People’s Great Khural adopted
Decree 93, which resolved to abandon capital punishment, but 10
months later it retreated from this decision. Most of those sentenced
to death were people in their 20s to 40s. And most of them had
committed a crime for the first time.
I would like to mention the main arguments that led me to oppose
the death penalty:
• Removing the death penalty does not mean removing punishment.
Criminals fear justice, and justice must be imminent
and unavoidable. But we cannot repair one death with another.
• The state has no right to risk making a judicial or procedural
mistake when deciding a question of life and death. Such
mistakes are unacceptable. Mistakes and miscarriages of justice
in applying the death penalty can only be prevented by
closing the door to it altogether. Only then will we be able
to genuinely honour human life and human rights and create
conditions to safeguard them.
On 13 March 2012, the Mongolian Parliament ratified the Second
Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, indicating that the country is poised to completely abolish
the death penalty.
Mongolia is taking steps to abolish the death penalty both in law and
practice. The criminal code is being amended to comply with the
Second Optional Protocol. Comments from Amnesty International
and specialized United Nations agencies were solicited in the course
of the drafting. The draft Law on Crimes proposed life imprisonment
as the harshest criminal sentence.
Mongolia is committed to contributing to international cooperation to
abolish the death penalty. Mongolia shares the concern over the continued
use of the death penalty in a number of countries. Consistent with
our opposition to capital punishment, Mongolia calls upon all states that
have not yet done so to join the vast majority of countries that do not
execute in the name of the law. It is important to underline the role and
critical importance of international and regional organizations, particularly
the United Nations, in the effort to abolish the death penalty.
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