China Case Analysis

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It is ironic that, in Mei Dan’s case, she is going to be deported, even though she suffered harassment based on her (perceived) religious beliefs, while Lian may avoid deportation, even if he was never persecuted by the Chinese government.

The Lian case offers the possibility that no one can be deported to China, regardless of whether they have suffered persecution or are likely to suffer persecution if deported.

It is too early to tell whether that will come to fruition, as this case will have to go back to the Board of Immigration Appeals to consider whether torture is the likely punishment of all returned Chinese emigres.

Ultimately, however, the court will have to decide whether all returned Chinese emigres are tortured, or are likely to be tortured, in which case, the need for attorneys to present evidence of torture, or of individual persecution, will be obviated.

In the meantime, however, attorneys for Chinese asylum seekers would be wise to use this case as a blueprint.

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Lian’s attorney submitted what the court called a “huge mass of evidence” of torture in China. The Seventh Circuit decision included a partial list of that evidence as follows: (1) news articles from Chinese newspapers (1996-1999) stating that repatriated Chinese citizens (typically from Fujian province) are jailed upon their return to China; (2) a report, published in 2000 by Human Rights in China, on China’s implementation of the Torture Convention that discusses detention pursuant to “custody and repatriation” and the prevalence of torture in the prison system; (3) a report by Human Rights Watch on prison conditions in China in 1997 and 1998 that mentions an “endemic problem of torture and ill-treatment in the country’s prisons and detention facilities”; (4) an article by the Laogai Research Foundation (a U.S.-based NGO that compiles information about China’s forced labor camps) about the fate of a political activist who was returned to China and forced to work in the labor camps; (5) an article written by American human rights activist Harry Wu about organ harvesting and “thought reform” in China’s forced labor camps; (6) a list of the forced labor camps in Fujian province; (7) an article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the punishment facing hundreds of Chinese from Fujian Province who had been smuggled by boat to British Columbia, when they are returned to China; (8) an Amnesty International report on China’s “extensive use of torture — from police to tax collectors to birth control officials”; (9) a 1998 Washington Post article on the number of people who have been tortured to death by police in China; and (10) a 1995 report by Human Rights in China that gives a prisoner’s first-hand account of being tortured in two Chinese detention centers.

Even without doing any independent research, an attorney can make a strong case, and one to which the court is clearly sympathetic, for preventing removal of any claimant from China, merely by obtaining and copying the work of Lian’s attorney in this case.

– David Ziemer

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David Ziemer can be reached by email.