TOM MALINOWSKI MAKES REMARKS ON THE 25 YEARS SINCE MONGOLIAN REVOLUTION

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor: Democracy and Free Speech: The Mongolian Experience at Twenty-Five Years
05/04/2015 12:22 PM EDT

Democracy and Free Speech: The Mongolian Experience at Twenty-Five Years

Remarks
Tom Malinowski
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
Freedom Online Conference
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
May 3, 2015

I’m delighted to be here with you to celebrate the 2015 World Press Freedom Day. Every year at this time we reflect on the state of press freedom around the world and honor the sacrifices made by journalists who have lost their lives or been threatened or imprisoned for doing their job, for discovering and telling the truth.

So, as we thank journalists for their work, we also call on governments to recognize the universal human right to free expression both online and offline.

A free press keeps people informed and holds government accountable, and the fact is that we can’t govern honestly without it. This is as true today as it has ever been in the past. Now, it’s true that much has changed in our global media environment. In many developed democracies, there are fewer daily newspapers. More and more people get their information from social media. But whenever I hear about a journalist who is attacked or threatened or censored somewhere in the world, it reminds me just how important journalism is – if it wasn’t important, as a means of giving power to ordinary citizens and curbing the power of governments, no one would go to the trouble of trying to restrain it. In this sense, the death of journalists on the job is proof that the death of journalism – something people in my country ocassionally talk about – is a myth.

It is also, of course, a call to action for all countries committed to human rights. At the State Department last week, we launched our annual Free the Press campaign, in which we highlight cases of individual reporters who have been wrongly imprisoned in countries around the world. One of them is Gao Yu, a 71-year-old Chinese journalist; she was arrested last year, coerced into making a televised confession, and sentenced to seven years in jail. In Syria, Mazen Darwish remains imprisoned by the Asad regime for trying to expose the regime’s brutal atrocities. In Vietnam, Ta Phong Tan continues to serve a 10-year sentence for unmasking government corruption. In Ethiopia, Reeyot Alemu, was arrested for writing an article critical of the Ethiopian government, and remains in prison under terrorism charges.

On Friday, we also invited three journalists who have been censored or detained in their own countries, Russia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, to come to the White House and interview President Obama—because we thought that the best reward you can give to a journalist isn’t praise, it’s an exclusive interview with the President of the United States. When governments go after journalists, this is how the U.S. responds.

We’ve included more details about these brave journalists on www.HumanRights.gov. And we tweeted about these cases using the hashtag #FreethePress. I encourage all of you to share their stories with your community, be that through retweeting, drafting articles or blogs, or if you must, revert to that old-fashioned mode of communication—simply tell your family and friends.

I know that many of you in this room experienced the transition from living in a political system in which freedom of expression was not protected to living in a system that guarantees your power to speak and write according to the dictates of your conscience. Arguably more than many of us in the United States and Europe, you know how important these freedoms are.

It’s been twenty-five years now since Mongolia held a remarkable, peaceful democratic revolution. In an era that saw so much violence and upheaval, Mongolia provided an example of a swift and nonviolent transition to a government that seeks to listen to its people in order to, as we often say in America, form a more perfect union. As the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, I wish there were more “Mongolias” in the world.

Mongolia has not rested on this significant achievement either. It has used the last 25 years to enact reforms protecting human rights and expanding social and economic opportunities for its citizens. Though there is still much difficult work to be done, the government has been doing what governments are supposed to do: removing restrictions on people to let them live lives of their own choosing according to their abilities.

Mongolia has also been recognized as one of the countries leading East Asia to a more democratic and free future. It is an active participant in important multilateral institutions, including the Community of Democracies and the Freedom Online Coalition. It recently chaired the Security Forum of the OSCE, it has been a strong partner of NATO and contributes above and beyond its size to UN Peacekeeping efforts in order to promote peace and security worldwide. We are grateful for Mongolia’s participation in those organizations to promote respect for democracy and human rights in the region.

I’d like to share with you a quote from a speech by President Elbegdorj [pron: EL-beg-dorj] before the Community of Democracies in 2013: “Mongolia stands ready to share her democratic lessons, achievements and success. We stand open to discuss our mistakes, the ways to correct them and to be studied by others. We are ready for action and engagement. Look at us as a center of democracy education, a life model for challenges and opportunities of freedom.”

It is important for countries that believe in these issues and share these values to band together. And Mongolia’s voice is particularly resonant. You are a democracy wedged between two countries with troubling human rights records and a history of censorship and suppression. You are the first country in Asia to participate in the Freedom Online Coalition. You may be smaller than your neighbors to the north and south, but your willingness to lead on these issues, to stick out your neck, makes Mongolia distinctive in the region. It increases Mongolia’s voice in the world.

And this, by the way, is good for you, too. It’s good for Mongolia’s future. You are more likely to attract foreign investment if you have a reputation as a stable country that respects the rule of law. Russia may have resources, strength, a sizable market, but its democratic failings have been felt in a powerful way. A smaller country with similar problems of corruption and abuse of power is simply not going to be able to compete. Your comparative advantage is your reputation.

Now, many factors have played a role in the success of Mongolia’s democracy, but there’s no doubt in my mind that a free media has been front and center. You’ve also faced a question every young democracy must answer, when it suddenly finds itself with dozens of new publications and TV and radio channels operating with few rules or traditions to guide their actions: how do you protect media freedom while encouraging media responsibility? This is a hard question. I would just leave you with this advice: Every country has good journalism and bad journalism. Every country has truth and falsehood in its media. But the government should not be the one deciding the difference. And the answer to bad journalism is not to put journalists in prison, even if we think a particular story they’ve published is untrue. Because when governments have the power to do that, they tend to use it against journalists who criticize them – against journalists who are just doing their job. A far better answer is to encourage the media to adopt high standards of its own, and to police them through strong mechanisms of self-regulation.

In your 25th year of democracy, the United States is eager to help you think through these challenges and build on your achievements thus far. We thank you for your commitment to democratic freedoms and for your leadership. You’ve set a powerful example not just in Asia but around the world, and I am certainly not alone in recognizing the value of our partnership. I would like to echo Vice-President Biden’s comments when he visited your country in 2011, which still ring true. He said we are “very proud to be considered a ‘third neighbor.’ And, like any good neighbor should, we’ll continue to do our part to support Mongolia’s political and economic development.”

On our panel today, we have Ms. Narajargal (Director of Globe International, NGO devoted to press freedom), MP Temuujin (former Minister of Justice), MP Batchimeg (human rights activist), Mr. Galaid (Director, Confederation of Mongolian Journalists), and Mr. Jargalsaikhan (famous Mongolian political and economic journalist). Thank you for joining us today and sharing your expertise as we examine the relationship between democracy and free speech in Mongolia.

Now I’m going to turn the floor over to the excellent panel assembled here today to discuss some of these issues. Please join me in welcoming them.

TOM MALINOWSKI ON REMARKS IN MEXICO CITY ON ACCESS TO JUSTICE

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Public Safety and Access to Justice
Remarks
Tom Malinowski
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
Open Government Partnership Steering Committee Ministerial
Mexico City, Mexico
April 23, 2015

As prepared for delivery

Thank you all for having me here. This is a timely gathering. Public safety and access to justice are high priority issues in the minds of many civil society representatives in the United States and, I should say, in the minds of American citizens generally. It is no secret that the conduct of law enforcement has been a headline issue for us this last year. In the United States, we believe that an informed and engaged civil society is essential to ensuring that government faithfully discharges its duties to protect its citizens, to guarantee human rights, and to hold itself and its officials accountable for their actions. We know that we’re not perfect. But we are committed to improvement and to upholding institutions that allow us to address our shortcomings. In this spirit, we’re looking forward to sharing ideas and best practices so that we can all build, or restore, trust between people and their government.

Because in countries where citizens lack trust and confidence in their government, where they do not feel enfranchised in decisions affecting their lives, there are a range of costs. Some can be drawn to violent extremism, others to gangs and crime. Corruption is more likely to increase; police and judicial power more likely to be abused. Basic services are distributed unjustly. Innovation and entrepreneurship are stifled as elites focus their power on maintaining a status quo that enables their unjust enrichment. In such societies, the state may seem like it’s growing stronger at the expense of civil society, but in fact institutions that lose the trust of their people often turn out to be hollow. They are strong until the day they are not; they create turmoil and instability that affects their neighbors and the world.

OGP points the way to an alternative, to creating a space where government and civil society can work together – to build trust and to ensure transparent, accountable, citizen-enabled and innovation-powered governance. Last September, President Obama challenged us to support civil society at home and abroad. The strength and success of nations depends, the President has said, on allowing citizens to solve problems without government interference, and on robust engagement between governments and civil society to advance shared goals.

One of OGP’s grand challenges, around which participants are encouraged to develop commitments, is “Promoting Safer Communities.” This is the most undersubscribed of OGP’s grand challenges, yet it is one of the most critical challenges facing countries in every corner of the world, in part because civilian insecurity can express itself in so many different ways—in gang violence and organized crime, in violent extremism, or officials who are complicit in corruption and human rights violations. Across a range of countries and communities, the security and justice sectors may be simply inadequate in creating secure conditions, guaranteeing access to justice, and protecting against human rights abuses. This creates space for crime and extremism to flourish and limits the potential for individual opportunity and economic growth. And ultimately, the persistence of these conditions can undermine the stability of the political system itself.

There is growing interest among civil society organizations in increasing OGP’s focus on this challenge area, and related issues such as access to justice and the promotion and protection of human rights. Transparency International’s new initiative on Safer Communities in Latin America is one example of how civil society and governments can work toward common goals – and I hope Cecilia will be able to share some of the ideas of this groundbreaking effort. With such examples in mind, we are hoping to start a discussion to explore how OGP can help advance the community security challenge.

In my country, events of the past year have called us to take a fresh look at questions of public safety, access to justice, and the need to strengthen police-community relations. In Ferguson, Missouri, public demonstrations and civil society interventions drew the nation’s attention to the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown and to concerns about the practices of the Ferguson Police Department. In addition to opening civil and criminal investigations, our Department of Justice sent mediators to create a dialogue between police, city officials, and residents to reduce tension in the community. In addition, DOJ is involved in a voluntary, independent, and objective assessment of the St. Louis County Police Department, looking at training, use of force, handling of mass demonstrations, and other areas where reform may be needed.

As President Obama has said, “[t]he fact is, in too many parts of (the United States), a deep distrust exists between law enforcement and communities of color.” At the President’s request, the Attorney General convened roundtable discussions among law enforcement, elected officials, and community members in six cities in December 2014 and January 2015. The President also appointed a Task Force on 21st Century Policing, made up of governmental and civil society members, which engaged a wide range of state, local, and tribal officials; subject matter experts; and community and faith leaders to develop a series of recommendations on how to strengthen public trust and foster strong relationships between local law enforcement and the communities they protect.

As we continue to strive for what our founding fathers termed “a more perfect union,” we encourage you both to make suggestions to us on what has worked for you in addressing such challenges and to consider what in this example may work in your country contexts.

We also want to hear your thoughts on how this set of issues manifests in different regions and countries. How, in your experience, do open government initiatives strengthen public safety and access to justice? Are there ways for OGP to encourage more countries to commit to improvements in this area? And if we consider access to justice and promotion and protection of human rights core parts of the open government agenda, should we build more robust evaluations into the IRM assessment? Finally, we need to come out of this session with more than great thoughts. We invite your specific recommendations on how OGP can empower citizens to play a role in ensuring accountability in the security and justice sectors.

It’s a lot to think about so with that, I’d like to turn to Cecilia for her remarks before we open up the floor for discussion.

U.S. OFFICIAL'S OP-ED ON CORRUPTION

FROM:  THE STATE DEPARTMENT 
Stopping the Flow of Corruption
Op-Ed
Tom Malinowski
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
Washington Post
December 26, 2014

When Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev in February, the Ukrainian leader left behind a spectacular Swiss chalet-style mansion, a golf course, dozens of antique cars and a private zoo boasting $10,000 nameplates for the animal pens. Even the Ukrainian public, painfully familiar with the corruption of its leaders, was shocked. Yanukovych had managed to keep the chalet hidden because it was owned not by him but by an anonymous shell company registered in Britain. Other corrupt leaders have used the same trick to hide billions of dollars offshore, including through companies registered in the United States.

The rise and fall of Ukraine’s top kleptocrat teaches us a couple of things about corruption.
First, in many countries, corruption and human rights are tightly bound. The chance to profit from corruption is why many authoritarian leaders seize and cling to power. It becomes the glue that holds their regimes together, giving them spoils to distribute while turning their cronies into criminals who could be exposed and punished if they turn disloyal. It is also among the issues most likely to fuel popular resistance to authoritarianism, as we’ve seen from Tunisia to Russia and Venezuela. Any strategy to promote democracy and human rights must have the fight against corruption at its heart.

Second, we can’t fight corruption abroad if we don’t stop its proceeds from flowing through our companies and banks. We already work hard to return illicitly acquired assets to benefit the citizens of such countries, generally after the leaders who stole them have left office. But this kind of “departure tax” for falling autocrats is not enough: We must do more to deny safe haven to such funds while corrupt leaders are still in power. One way to do that is to prevent the registration of anonymous shell companies on our shores.

The Treasury Department recently took a significant step toward limiting the use of such companies by proposing a regulation that would require financial institutions to collect and verify the identity of the people behind company accountholders. President Obama’s 2015 budget includes a much more far-reaching proposal: It would require all companies to identify their “beneficial ownership” — the human beings who own or control them — to the IRS as part of a routine tax filing and make that information more readily available to law enforcement. Congress should enact this proposal now to ensure that our legal and financial systems are not used to hide corruption and facilitate autocracy overseas.

The overwhelming majority of U.S. companies that have a bank account or pay taxes in the United States already disclose their beneficial ownership. Thus, they would not be burdened and would only benefit from a reform that makes registration in the United States a sure sign of legitimacy rather than a cause for suspicion.

It is foreign criminals and corrupt officials who can benefit from the ability to conceal their identities under our current financial system. They are unlikely to file a U.S. tax return, and if they register a paper legal entity in the United States, they can use it to open a bank account on an offshore island. Indeed, they can create a web of 50 anonymous entities overnight simply by calling a state company registration office, or they can even purchase “shelf” companies registered a decade ago, adopting an additional guise of establishment and credibility. When U.S. law enforcement agencies investigate corruption or other crimes, often all they have is the name of a company and a dead end.

The wildly corrupt son of Equatorial Guinea’s president, for example, allegedly set up a slew of shell companies in the United States to launder millions of dollars of bribes from international logging companies, hiding any ties to himself. Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue used this money to purchase a $30 million Malibu, Calif., estate, a $38 million private jet and about $2 million worth of Michael Jackson memorabilia, among other luxuries. Meanwhile, most of his compatriots live on less than $2 per day.

Corruption empowers and enriches dictators. But here is another lesson from Ukraine: It can also become their greatest political vulnerability. Authoritarian governments may be able to muster excuses for shooting demonstrators, arresting political enemies or censoring the Internet, but no cultural, patriotic or national security argument can justify thievery. Disgust with corruption can also ease the ethnic, religious and social divisions such regimes exploit to stay in power — it’s a point of agreement between southern and northern Nigerians, nationalists and liberals in Russia, Shiites and Sunnis across the Middle East.

Fighting corruption by improving financial transparency may be one of the most effective ways of promoting liberty around the world. Members of Congress who believe in that cause and who want us to do better should embrace the president’s proposal to strengthen those laws by closing the shell company loophole that enables dictators to conceal their criminality from their people and the world.

SENATE HUMAN RIGHTS CAUCUS LAUNCHES

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 

Remarks at the Launch of the Senate Human Rights Caucus

Remarks

Tom Malinowski

Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor

Washington, DC

September 10, 2014

Thank you for the opportunity to address you here today. We are meeting at a time when our values are being challenged and our country is being tested, not for the first or last time, in many parts of the world, but perhaps most starkly in the rise of the ISIL terrorist movement in Syria and Iraq. This has been a summer of horrific reminders that our capacity to imagine evil rarely measures up to the reality—a summer of mass executions, ethnic cleansing, the persecution of religious minorities, and the murder of two innocent Americans who came to Syria to help us understand the people suffering there, by foreigners who came to kill those people.

In my bureau in the State Department, especially the part dedicated to religious freedom, we have been watching this nightmare unfold, including growing sectarianism in Iraq and attacks on members of religious minorities, for some time. We know that when violence undermines the fragile order that keeps diverse societies together, when people seeking power or land start exploiting religious difference to get what they want, that is usually a warning sign of worse to come. So when ISIL attacked Mosul earlier this year; when it started forcing people to convert to its warped vision or be killed, we were horrified -- but saw it as the logical extension of the cancer that groups like this represent.

In early August ISIL fighters advanced into the Sinjar district of Iraq, near the Syrian border, where members of the Yezidi religious minority live. We don’t know for certain how many members of this ancient community were killed. Tens of thousands sought refuge on Mount Sinjar, the one piece of high ground not occupied by ISIL. Representatives of the Yezidi community in the United States contacted my staff, sharing this story of the forced exodus of an entire population, whose survivors were trapped, surrounded by ISIL, with probably days left before they would succumb to thirst or exposure.

Messages relayed from that mountain by cell phones with dying batteries, messages that told us precisely where the survivors were hiding and where the ISIL forces were massing, made their way to my office and were then relayed throughout the State Department, to the White House, to the Pentagon, and to CENTCOM. To help the Yezidis, President Obama authorized a humanitarian effort to save people trapped without food or water on Mount Sinjar; from August 8 to 13, the U.S. military conducted seven nightly airdrops, which provided more than 114,000 meals and even more importantly - 35,000 gallons of drinking water. The President also authorized targeted airstrikes to assist forces in Iraq as they fought to break ISIL’s siege of Mount Sinjar and evacuate these people before it was too late.

But this is obviously still the beginning. ISIL has not yet been defeated. As we look ahead to that challenge, I want to make just four simple points.

First, ISIL is unique. Not because it uses bombings, assassinations, and kidnappings to terrorize people, or because it seeks to control territory, but because it targets entire groups of minorities for particularly horrific and persistent violence, simply for who they are. It murders men who don’t agree to accept its warped version of Islam. It has kidnapped thousands of women belonging to other religious sects, taking them not simply as hostages, but as commodities, spoils of war to be raped or sold as slaves. When tyrants like Assad commit their crimes, they try to hide their tracks; they know on some level that what they do is shameful; ISIL puts its crimes on YouTube. This is a casting aside of all limits, something that makes ISIL arguably distinct even from al Qaeda. As Secretary Kerry has said, ISIL’s crimes “bear all the warning signs and hallmarks of genocide.” It is of the utmost importance that those who commit such acts not be allowed to project a narrative of invincibility and success, as ISIL has attempted to do these last few months.

Second, ISIL is not self-limiting. It won’t exhaust itself; it won’t draw-up at a certain point and decide that it has gone far enough or been sufficiently barbaric; it will always want more towns and regions to conquer, more lives to ravage and destroy. On the rare occasions in history when such evil has arisen, people with the power to stop it have had to stand up and stop it. It will not stop itself.

Third, ISIL will be defeated. As President Obama has said and will explain further tonight, these murderers have already failed. “Their horrific acts,” the president has emphasized, “only unite us as a country and stiffen our resolve.” They have repulsed and united the world as well. And that creates an opportunity we are seizing: to build a coalition that includes the countries in the Middle East most immediately threatened, and to confront these killers with allies from all the communities ISIL has attacked, Christian, Shia, Yezidi, Sunni and others.

It bears repeating that ISIL’s campaign is not fundamentally a religious phenomenon, or manifestation of mainstream Islam. Here is a great example: Last year, two wannabe jihadists, Yusuf Sarwar and Mohammed Ahmed, set off from England to join ISIL in Syria. Before they left, they ordered two books from Amazon: Islam for Dummies and The Koran for Dummies. This is a movement for people whose only religion is nihilism. The fellowship they seek is not from people seeking God, but from those who get their kicks from killing. And they will be destroyed first and foremost by those whose traditions of faith they have hijacked.

Finally, ISIL did not emerge from nothing. There’s a reason why such a destructive force ascended in this part of the world at this moment in history. It ascended because a dictator in Syria has spent three years trying to crush what began as a peaceful democratic movement, destroying towns and cities, driving half the people of his country from their homes, until some of them became so desperate that they turned to the false deliverance and destructive fanaticism ISIL offered. It ascended because many in Iraq’s Sunni population felt legitimate grievances were ignored by the government in Baghdad. ISIL not only abuses human rights; it is the product of the abuse of human rights.

We should remember that at bottom, human rights provide a way of arranging human society so that all people have a chance to pursue their ambitions within rules that require fair play and prohibit coercion. When such rules break down, the people who rise tend to be those most willing and able to impose their will violently. Most of those people will be run of the mill thugs. But some will be true sociopaths, the sort responsible for history’s greatest calamities. Calamities like this one.

So if anyone ever asks you, why do we try to spread respect for human rights in the world? Why do we press this cause even with friends and allies, in countries that appear to be stable and friendly to us? Why do we take the risk of coming to the aid of people who are persecuted for their beliefs or faith, or subject to mass atrocities? What is the worst that can happen if these things are just allowed to go on?

Here is your answer.