San Francisco Sentinel Report: Court Rules in Favor of Asylum for Woman Who Aided Falun Gong Practitioner

The San Francisco Sentinel reported on a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruling of February 7, 2006, that a Chinese woman who is not a Falun Gong practitioner but who brought news clippings about the spiritual movement into China is eligible for asylum in the United States.

The report stated that a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the woman, Ling Zhou, "had a well-founded fear that she would be persecuted because of her action if she returned to China."

Circuit Judge David Thompson wrote, "The evidence shows that the Chinese government perceives Zhou's actions as a threat to its political power [...] that motivates the government to locate and arrest her."

The article discussed how Zhou, a former supervisor at a private software company in China, brought newspaper articles from Singapore into China at the request of a college classmate who practices Falun Gong. The newspaper articles spoke positively of Falun Gong and were critical of the Chinese Communist Party's persecution of Falun Gong.

The Sentinel article stated, "Later that month, Zhou left for a previously planned trip to the United States. While she was in the United States, Zhou learned that her friend was arrested and that police searched her apartment in Guangzhou and her parents' home in Loyang in an attempt to arrest her for bringing 'counterrevolutionary materials' into China from overseas."

After Zhou's first application for asylum was denied by an immigration judge and an immigration appeals panel, the 9th Circuit overturned those rulings. It was stated that, "Zhou had provided compelling evidence that she could be arrested, imprisoned or assigned to hard labor on the basis of what the Chinese government viewed as a political opinion."

The Sentinel reported that the appeals court ordered the Board of Immigration Appeals to block Zhou's deportation and sent the case to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to decide whether to grant asylum.

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