Brussels, 19 November 2002. On the 13 November, the 10th night of the peaceful protest of tractor operators, against the Land Ownership Law demanding concrete ways of fair privatization of the Land protest, more than 500 police officers came to Sukhbaatar square - the central square of the capital city of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar (Oulan Bator) - to crack down the gathering in a night operation (3 am local time). According to reports of the Ulaanbaatar-based "Liberty Center" in the first two hours of this police action more than 50 person have been arrested and deported from the central square to the so called center of identification located in Denjiin Myanga Ulaanbaatar's north, while 11 activists were still blocked in the building #2 of the Democratic Party and 30 tractor operators blocked in the building of Lucky center. Arrested people were mostly activists and members of the Democratic Party locked in the office of the Democratic Party, which was under siege by police forces, arresting any person trying to access the building. Mr Erdene, the leader of the capital city branch of the Democratic Union - the first non-communist NGO established in 1989 is likely to have been arrested and the whereabouts of Mr. Bat-Uul, the leader of the Fair Land Privatization Movement, are unknown.

Question from Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Transnational Radical Party and Member of the European Parliament, to the European Commission

"Has the Commission gathered information about this event that goes for over 10 days before the crackdown ? Has the Commission any information about the handeling of the aftermath of the arrest ? How does the Commission evaluate the situation in Mongolia ?"