MONGOLIA: A mass grave containing hundreds of Buddhist monks and civilians executed in Stalinist purges in the 1930s has been found in the Mongolian capital, members of an investigative team said yesterday.
An examination of a construction site in western Ulan Bator had revealed 348 skulls with bullet holes in the back. There were at least 575 victims, but the number could be more than 1,000, investigators said.
Historians say at least 30,000 intellectuals, dissidents, noble- men and monks were killed in purges by the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party in the 1930s.
More than 700 monasteries and Buddhist temples were destroyed in Mongolia, which became the world's second Communist state in 1921 under the domination of the neighbouring Soviet Union.
Seizures of private property and forced relocation of nomadic herders led to widespread unrest that was brutally crushed.
At the mass grave, some 90 per cent of the dead were found with the remains of yellow and red garments and religious items usually worn by Buddhist monks, investigators said.
But objects belonging to civilians from the upper and middle classes were also found, said a historian and Buddhist monks who took part in the investigation.
- (Reuters)