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 A Mongolian student studying
film in the United States has returned this summer to create a documentary
on domestic violence in Mongolian homes.
Daria Tsagaan, a student in
the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at
Berkley, is being sponsored by UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center which
has sent 12 graduate students to do similar work throughout the world.
Daria Tsagaan reported to the
local Amnesty International office in Ulaanbaatar where she was given
position papers to read. In a report she wrote for the university she
said, “I had a feeling that Amnesty International mostly works with
policymakers and trainers instead of victims. In order to hear the stories
of actual or potential victims of domestic violence, I decided to go
to the edge of the city, where the poorest people and the newest migrants
from the provinces live.”
“I began by interviewing
the teachers and the principal of a special school at the far west end of the city which deals
with kids who don’t go to school regularly. As in any community there are many reasons
these children do not attend. That week I concentrated on three kids who lived in
extremely violent environments. It was very hard for me to handle hearing all those heart-breaking
stories. “If possible, I wish I could make all alcohol drinks disappear,”
said Chinguun, a second grader who is now 15. He didn’t go to school when he was younger
because his violent alcoholic relatives always beat him, so he escaped to his herdswoman
grandmother’s home. But she lived in a province, isolated and far from schools.”
“The more I heard people’s
stories, the more I felt that I owed them the best possible project. I decided to change
my initial plan of making a documentary, which would have mostly concentrated on one
central character to reveal other issues while building his or her story. I thought that it
might be a better idea to use multi-media tools to process all of the stories and create an interactive
website so it might interest many readers worldwide whose interest is on this issue.”
Daria Tsagaan also sought out
interviews with victims of different forms of violence as well as those
who had succeeded in life due to help they had received in overcoming
their traumas.
Upon returning to the United
States she says it will take two months of editing to put together suitable
footage of her interviews. Then she will create her website to publicize
the options available to help those Mongolian women and children trapped
in abusive homes.
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