U.S. Court Rules Rape is Grounds for Asylum
A federal appeals court has issued a groundbreaking decision holding that a Guatemalan woman can pursue asylum in the U.S. Ms. Ms. Garcia-Martinez was gang-raped by soldiers who believed that she and her family supported guerrilla rebels.
In a June 14, 2004 ruling, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that Reina Izabel Garcia-Martinez had "survived atrocities that most of us only experience in our nightmares," overruling an immigration judge's 2001 decision to deny her asylum claim. The Bureau of Immigration Appeals had rejected her case.
The panel say the immigration judge's ruling that Ms. Garcia–Martinez had failed to demonstrate past persecution had overlooked evidence that was "stamped on every page" of her asylum request. In her application, Ms. Garcia-Martinez said that leftist guerrillas had come to her village and forcibly conscripted young men, including her brother, who was kidnapped in 1983. She testified that a few years later, the Guatemalan military began coming to her village and, rather than protecting villagers, began beating and raping women based on their mistaken belief that villagers were aiding the guerrillas. When she was nineteen, soldiers forced their way into her house and beat her parents while three soldiers took turns beating and raping her. When Ms. Garcia-Martinez recovered from her injuries, fearing soldiers would return for her, she made her way through Mexico to San Francisco.
In 2001, an immigration judge found while she was credible, Ms. Garcia Marques had "failed to show . . . that her attack had anything to do with . . . her political opinion, her race, religion, her political affiliation or membership in a particular social group." Those are the grounds on which a claim of asylum may be based.
The Ninth Circuit's decision sharply disputed that holding, saying the immigration judge's "determination that Garcia's rape was a random criminal act, unconnected to the government, is not supported by substantial evidence."
Posted by P6 at June 18, 2004 05:54 PM
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Comments
The same 9th that W decreeed a judge for?
Posted by Mr.Murder at June 18, 2004 10:51 PM