B. Gantuya, a victim of the Construction and Development and also the Bayan Ondor San savings and loan credit union, said she is one of eight hunger-strikers and announced the hunger strike with her two year old son, on Sukhbaatar square on October 16. She claims she placed MNT 176 million in those two associations.

“The money was not just my own. Most of it was salary from my brothers, their wives and relatives who are working abroad,” Gantuya told MonInfo Tuesday on Sukhbaatar square.

“Also the money we received when we sold my mother’s apartment was there as well…This is my final opportunity to get the money back. If I die in the street no one will know.”

The hunger-strikers said they are demanding the money from a fund set up by the government, which was established as a risk fund collected from the windfall profits tax on gold and copper sales.

Yet government agencies have yet to state that there are any concrete ways in which the government could reimburse victims.

D. Odbayar, Minister of Justice and Internal Affairs, said during a meeting Monday evening that there was a possibility for some victims to be reimbursed if the government sold the sequestered properties of the savings and loan credit unions. However he commented it was not definite.

“We want the government to pay us back, but not public money collected from taxes,” said J. Khuvaa, a victim from the New Bolor Orgil and Globe savings and loan credit unions.

“Those officials in the government who greatly benefited from the unions must pay the victims from their profits.”

However the hunger strikers may not be able to remain on the square protesting for long, ministry officials said Tuesday.

A worker from the Ministry of Justice and Internal Affairs said that the strikers had not received official permission for the protest and would most likely be removed.

Khuvaa said that the hunger strikers also have not been able to use establishments’ toilets because the organizations located near Sukhbaatar square have not been receptive. She also said the capital police removed a ger they attempted to build to house the hunger strikers.  

President N. Enkhbayar noted in his speech during the opening ceremony of the autumn parliament session that the state and government should compensate the victims of the loan and savings association damage, but failed to mention a mechanism for the reimbursement.               

But an officer of the Ministry of Justice and Internal Affairs, speaking in anonymity, said that it is not a legal measure if the government compensates the victims of unions.

“State money is the people’s money; secondly, the other savings and loan credit unions will also then go ‘bankrupt’ so they can also be reimbursed.”