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Protesters in Mongolia tried to force their way into the State Palace over the weekend in response to allegations of corruption with officials involved in the country’s coal trade.
The U.S. Embassy in Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar issued an alert Monday saying that several hundred protesters had gathered in the freezing cold at the city’s Sukhbaatar Square during the weekend and marched to the presidential residence with some people attempting to force their way inside the building.
The demonstrators chanted and sang while 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.
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 (ETT) and two other companies.
