Sanjaasürengiin Zorig

Sanjaasürengiin Zorig (; 20 April 1962 – 2 October 1998) was a Mongolian politician who played a prominent role in leading the country's 1990 Democratic Revolution. His supporters called him the "Golden Swallow of Democracy" (, ). He served as the chairman of the Mongolian Democratic Union, a pro-democracy non-governmental organization established in December 1989.

After the 1990 Democratic Revolution, he was elected as a deputy to the People's Great Khural from the Mongolian Democratic Party in Mongolia's first free and fair elections. Later, after Mongolia adopted its fourth constitution, Zorig was elected twice to the newly established State Great Khural in 1992 and 1996. Between April and October 1998, he served as Minister of Infrastructure in the cabinet of Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj. On 2 October 1998, at the age of 38, Zorig was assassinated at his home. After his death, his sister Oyuun entered politics to fill his vacant parliamentary seat and later founded the Civic Will Party in 2000.

Early life Zorig's grandfather was Russian geographer and ethnographer A. D. Simukov who had come to Mongolia as part of an expedition headed by Pyotr Kozlov. Zorig's grandfather was a victim of Marshal Choibalsan's purges, leaving his daughter Dorjpalam, Zorig's mother, an orphan. Dorjpalam starred in a popular Mongolian movie before marrying Sanjaasüren, a Buryat professor at the Mongolian State University. Zorig was born on 20 April 1962 in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of the Mongolian People's Republic, and became the second of their three children.

From 1970 onward, Zorig attended middle school No. 23 in Ulaanbaatar, one of the city's Russian-language schools. From 1980 to 1985, he studied philosophy at Moscow's Lomonosov Moscow State University. Afterward, he worked for a year as an instructor for the Mongolian Revolutionary Youth League in Ulaanbaatar, attended by his family members, friends, politicians, and other citizens.

The Zorig Foundation, founded in October 1998 shortly after S. Zorig's murder, exists today as "a Mongolian non-profit organization promoting democracy through social action, youth activities, and good governance programs."

Murder case trial In December 2016, the district court in a closed hearing has convicted three individuals Ts. Amgalanbaatar, D. Sodnomdarjaa and T. Chimgee of the 1998 murder. The panel of judges issued a guilty verdict after the hearing that was held over a period of 6 weeks. The defendants were each given prison sentences of between 24 and 25 years to be carried in a strict regime prison. In March 2017, the Criminal Appeals Court of Ulaanbaatar has rejected the appeal of the 3 defendants after confirming that the testimony by the convicts D. Sodnomdarjaa and Ts. Amgalanbaatar given during the investigation regarding the case and the facts, as well as the hand-written testament by B. Sodnomdarjaa correspond to the testimonies of the relevant witnesses, material evidences from the site of the case, notes taken during the investigation at the site of the crime, as well as the conclusions of the experts regarding bodily injuries of the victim.

Then-deputy prime minister Tsendiin Nyamdorj, some other politicians and victim's family members questioned the decision to hold the trial behind closed doors. In December 2017, the Cabinet of Mongolia permitted the declassification of the majority of the murder case file, consisting of 14,926 pages, while 74 pages of materials were to be kept classified. The declassified documents had been transferred from the General Intelligence Agency of Mongolia to the Archive of Criminal Cases Database under the Supreme Court of Mongolia. As of April 2026, the crime remains unsolved; many believe corrupt parliament members hired people to kill him.