The Port Arthur Case () was a fabricatedUrangua, Khereed Jamsran. "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 119-120 political case carried out between 1947 and 1949 in Mongolian People's Republic.
Over 80 Chinese nationals living in Mongolia were accused of having been recruited into the Kuomintang intelligence network engaged in espionage, sabotage, arson, and a plot to assassinate the Mongolian Prime Minister Khorloogiin Choibalsan. The accused, almost all of whom held Chinese rather than Mongolian citizenship, were arrested in three successive waves, interrogated under torture, and sentenced to death or long prison terms.Urangua, Khereed Jamsran. "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 109, 123
After the deaths of Choibalsan and Joseph Stalin in 1952 and 1953 and the subsequent relaxation of the political climate, Mongolian authorities reinvestigated the case. Internal Affairs Ministry and ruling-party commissions in 1954 and 1955 concluded that the alleged Kuomintang organization had never existed and that the case had been manufactured through coerced confessions and falsified evidence. At its meeting on May 18, 1955, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) discussed the report of the commission that had investigated the so-called “Port Arthur Case.” The Bureau decided to release the people who had been convicted in connection with that case and to nullify the earlier decision that had authorized the use of illegal methods during the investigation. The convicts were rehabilitated in 1955, the officials responsible were prosecuted, and all victims have been formally acquitted by the Supreme Court of Mongolia by the year 2001.Urangua, Khereed Jamsran. "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 120
Background
Political repression has been described as a defining tragedy of twentieth-century Mongolian history. Persecution on political grounds began soon after the establishment of the people's government: in the autumn of 1922 the first prime minister of the People's Government, Dogsomyn Bodoo, and thirteen others were executed. Over the following decades several thousand people lost their lives or property in roughly a dozen waves of political prosecution. The peak occurred during the Great Repression of 1937–1940, when more than 25,000 people were persecuted.Christopher Atwood, Encyclopedia of Mongolia and the Mongol Empire. Facts on File, 2004., 209-210
Although the scale of arrests declined after the early 1940s, practices such as unfounded suspicion, the manufacture of cases, and the use of torture during interrogation continued until 1949. The Port Arthur Case has been cited as one of the clearest later examples. Unusually, its victims were not Mongolians but resident Chinese. According to the 1940 census, 7,039 Chinese nationals lived in Mongolia, 4,425 of them in the capital city of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar.Х. Мэндсайхан [Kh. Mendsaikhan], Монгол улс дахь гадаадын иргэдийн харьяаллын асуудал (1921–1940) [The issue of citizenship of foreign nationals in Mongolia (1921–1940)] (Ulaanbaatar, 2012), 50.
Kuomintang China had recognized the independence of the Mongolian People's Republic in 1946 but, owing to the ongoing Chinese Civil War, did not open a diplomatic mission in the country. By 1947–1948 it was becoming clear that the Soviet-backed Communists were winning the Chinese civil war while the Kuomintang faced defeat, leading later researchers to regard the notion that the Kuomintang was running an intelligence operation in Mongolia at that moment as implausible.Urangua, Jamsran Khereed. "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 108-109, 121
Etymology
The reason the fabricated case was given the name "Port Arthur" has never been established.Urangua, Jamsrangiin (Khereed). "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 109-110 Port Arthur was an ice-free naval port on the Yellow Sea. Soviet forces expelled Japanese troops from it on 22 August 1945, after which the Soviet Union and China signed an agreement to use the Port Arthur area as a naval base for thirty years, with the port to revert to Chinese ownership thereafter. In some publications, this case is erroneously transliterated as the Port-Artur Case or Port Artur Case.D. Dashpurev. Reign of Political Terrorism and Repression in Mongolia 1920-1990 (Washington, D.C.), p.65-66
In subsequent Mongolian political discourse, "Port Arthur" became a byword for trumped-up political prosecutions. The historian L. Jamsran, for instance, likened the later case against the politicians D. Tömör-Ochir and Ts. Lookhuz to "the Port Arthur Case" using it as shorthand for fabricated charges produced in a climate of fear.НХШХ-ны баримтын төвд хадгалагдаж буй Л.Жамсрангийн хавтаст хэрэг. Т.9
The Case The operation was developed over about six months, with mobilizations conducted in three waves; the formal investigation ran from April 1948 to October 1949. It was run by the Third Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was responsible for the security of the marshal and the prime minister. The division head Ch. Mend and the officer N. Rentsendoo directed the case.
In 1947–1948, unemployed Chinese residents were being conscripted into compulsory labor. Using this situation, the Third Division acted through an informant, B. Demberel (codenamed "Buu"), a boiler mechanic at Choibalsan's residence who, according to the later inquiry, was illiterate in both Chinese and Mongolian and addicted to money and alcohol. On instructions from the division, Demberel circulated word that staff—a stoker, a cook, a gardener, a poultry keeper, and similar positions—were being hired at the marshal's residence, and that those taking such jobs would be exempted from compulsory labor and granted tax relief.Urangua, Jamsrangiin (Khereed). "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 111
In September 1947, a trader named Jan-San-Mu approached Demberel at the market, saying that his business partner Jün-nön-güi was about to be sent to compulsory labor and asking whether work could be found for him. Demberel reported this, and his superiors instructed him to encourage the Chinese to apply for positions at the residence. A laboratory agent, Minjüür, posing as the residence's commandant, met the applicants and recorded their details; photographs, applications, and questionnaires were collected from Chinese who sought the jobs. These documents were later treated as evidence that the applicants had infiltrated the marshal's residence in order to kill him.Urangua, Jamsrangiin (Khereed). "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 111-112
Arrests and Interrogations
Jün-nön-güi and Jan-San-Mu were designated leaders of an alleged Kuomintang intelligence cell operating in Mongolia and were arrested and interrogated. In his testimony, Jün-nön-güi—a native of Shanxi who had come to Mongolia in 1925 and ran a private shop in Ulaanbaatar—stated that during a 1945 trip to Hohhot in Inner Mongolia he had been recruited by the Kuomintang military intelligence and tasked with conducting espionage in Mongolia and assassinating Mongolia's Prime Minister Khorloogiin Choibalsan. He was arrested on 29 April 1948 with a prosecutor's authorization on suspicion of preparing a terrorist act; the later inquiry concluded the confession had been obtained through beatings. According to some sources, around 80-100 Chinese were arrested and around 40 Chinese were executed.Urangua, Jamsran Khereed. "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 122.
Property confiscated from Jün-nön-güi included five gold rings, gold weighing about four jin, and 700 Chinese silver coins. He was interrogated 53 times between 29 April and 4 June 1948, during which 23 names were extracted. In the first wave, 28 Chinese were charged with intelligence and related offenses, and the property of those arrested was seized.
During the interrogations, unrelated offenses sometimes surfaced. In the second wave, for example, Go-Yu-Zan—a Chinese shopkeeper born in 1898 who had come to Mongolia in 1919 and had a Mongolian wife—was found to have dealt in 7–8 kg of opium. He admitted to the drug offense but denied any involvement in espionage.Urangua, Jamsrangiin (Khereed). "Port Artur Case" (Mongolian: Порт Артурын хэрэг). Historia Mongolarum (Scientific Journal of the National University of Mongolia), Tom. XIX, Fasc. 7, no. 19 (546), 2020, pp. 112
A Special Court appointed by the Presidium of the State Little Khural handed down heavy sentences in a criminal verdict of 10 February 1949. By a decree of 2 July 1949, the clemency appeals of 18 people sentenced to death were rejected.
Reinvestigation and First Rehabilitation (1954-1955)
Following the deaths of Choibalsan and Stalin in 1952 and 1953, the one-man dictatorships were dismantled and principles of collective leadership were restored. On the initiative of Dashiin Damba, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP), a review of past cases began.Т. Гэндэн [T. Genden], Гурван түмэн хүний амь [The Lives of Thirty Thousand People] (Ulaanbaatar, 1999), 153. A commission headed by Nasaljav, established by ministerial order on 1 March 1954, examined the Port Arthur Case between 2 March and 24 June 1954.
The commission found, among other things, that the supposed "active leader" Jü-shin-güi had in fact refused to come to the capital and that Jan-San-Mu had declined to work at the marshal's residence, making the arrest of Jün-nön-güi on suspicion of terrorism baseless. It documented that investigators had used beatings, starvation, forced intoxication, forced opium consumption, confinement in an unheated punishment cell, and intimidation to construct the image of a "Kuomintang counter-revolutionary intelligence, sabotage, arson and espionage organization." It also found that innocent people who had traveled to the provinces on private business were falsely recorded as having foreign intelligence contacts. Of 28 ministry informants involved, 22 were singled out for the harshest treatment, and secret notes were passed to the special court's judge—an action the inquiry characterized as the elimination of witnesses. People who tried to expose the case as false were dismissed from the ministry or themselves implicated.