While I was at a market in rural Mongolia one day, the cops were arresting someone accused of stealing. Although he was indeed a suspect, I felt the police were a little too harsh on him, like the stereo-typically dubious cops of colonial Britain. It seemed like he was completely caught off guard when the police targeted him, which makes him seem less guilty as he appeared oblivious of committing any crimes. When he noticed the police had accused him of stealing, he just had a puzzled look on his face, not even bracing himself, when the cops tackled him and shoved his face in the dirt. They also beat him with batons almost instantaneously like he was a pinata, and demanded he admit to his crime. I thought little of it at first, but then as I was walking back to my car, I found the town jail. I looked around at the place a little, trying not to make a scene of it. As I watched the police, I noticed that they essentially treated anyone in the jails like crap. They disrespected them quite a bit, and I noticed they were still trying to crack the person I saw at the market. They burned him with cigarettes and continued to cyclically beat him with batons, and they would kick at his shins with their steel-toed combat boots. The man still seemed fairly confused as to what was going on. The police clearly used torture rather generously, the few inmates looked disoriented and scared, although the disorientation may have been from what got them in jail, like alcohol or drugs. Nevertheless, some of the inmates looked to have infections where dirt got in their sores from being beaten. Some of the cots were stained with blood from untended injuries. The air in the building smelled stale with vomit, wounds, rats, and infectious bacteria. I also noticed there were rats running around under the cots, talk about setting up for another outbreak of the black plague. One of the inmates was sneezing profusely, probably in response to the tie-dye colored mold growing on the wall. I saw an article posted on the wall that titled "Police Officer Charged With Violating Suspect's Human Rights", it looked like they had used it for dart practice. I also noticed that there was an angry drunk locked up in the same cell as a juvenile who must have shop-lifted or started a fight, the drunk was bad-mouthing the boy and it looked like the boy was having a challenging time at continuously ignoring the man. Many of the prisoners appeared to have a disease with similar symptoms, something resembling tuberculosis. There was a box of books regarding different subjects, from the bible to woodworking books to transcendentalist works. The label on the box said that it was from an NGO of some sort, and other than the books in the box, there was very little for the prisoners to do with their time. Ultimately, the cells looked overpopulated and the prisoners within them looked neglected and unhealthy.
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