ARTICLES
December 1997 ARTICLES
LETTERS
Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Evil Like Buddha
FOUR CHINESE REFUGEES FEAR DEPORTATION
By Christopher Zehnder
The visitors' waiting room at the Lerdo Detention Facility in Bakersfield is stark and uninviting. After passing our identification through a slot to a guard behind an opaque window, my companion and I waited several minutes before being admitted into the visiting room.
A sign on the door of the visiting room warned against the exposure of certain unspecified body parts. My companion, a Chinese interpreter, passing through this door into a long narrow room, found ourselves face-to-face with the prisoners we had come to see. They were three Chinese women and one man, looking rather lost in that long narrow room. Separated from them by a wall and thick glass, we conversed with them through telephone receivers. We soon learned what crimes had brought them, since 1994, to be detained under maximum security.
The first I interviewed, Tin Chin Wang, fled Communist China, in 1993, she said, to escape an abusive husband. Her husband, she said, had forced her family to betroth her to him when she was only three years old. She fled from her husband (whom she described as evil "like Buddha") and China by boarding a ship to the U.S. Upon entering the U.S., she was detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). She has since become a Christian, and is afraid to return to China because she fears execution there on account of her religion. She said both her grandparents and parents had been executed under Mao for being Christian.
I next spoke to Zhen Fong Zheng, who fled China, she says, to escape a large fine imposed on her for having two children. Zhen said that when she discovered she was pregnant with her second child, she fled to the mountains, presumably to escape the abortion the Chinese government would force on her. After giving birth to this child, a son, she was fined the equivalent of $1,600 by the government, a large sum for a Chinese peasant. When her son reached school age in 1993, the government forbade him to attend school. Finally when the government allowed him to register, they fined Zhen and her husband an additional $500. To escape these fines, Zhen said, a relative paid her way to the United States. Her husband, a farmer, remains in China, and having been denied employment for fathering a second child, lives off the charity of relatives.
Twenty-three-year-old Shiou Yon Zhou told me in halting English that at age 19 she fled China to escape a forced abortion. When she was two months pregnant, she and her child's father approached Chinese officials, seeking permission to marry. The officials informed her that both she and the young man were too young to marry; according to law, she must be 23 and he, 25. Because of this, the government officals said Shiou must abort her child. At a government hospital, she said she was given an abortifacient pill, to be followed by an injection. Shiou says, however, she escaped before receiving the injection, jumping from the building's third story. It seems the escape had been planned, for her boy friend was waiting for her, she says, in a car. Shiou boarded a ship for the United States, where she arrived, in San Diego, very sick. She was taken to a hospital in San Diego, where she lost her child. Subsequently, the INS imprisoned Shiou. While in prison, Shiou became a Christian. She has been in prison since 1994.
Shiou faces imprisonment if she returns to China--a fate similar to that of another detainee, 30-year-old Su Bin Li. Su Bin Li says that after giving birth to their second child his wife underwent a government mandated sterilization. In addition, the government fined Su Bin the equivalent of $10,000. Su Bin said his wife, weakened by the sterilization, and worried over the fine, died of a heart-attack. Since Su Bin could not pay the fine (he made an equivalent of $90 a month), he faced the prospect of a government confiscation of his property, and since even that would not pay the entire fine, Su Bin faced certain imprisonment. He related that a friend bought an airplane ticket for him. Arriving in Miami, he was apprehended by immigration authorities and imprisoned. If deported to China, Su Bin would need to pay the fine and would be imprisoned.
Even though deportation to China seems to threaten imprisonment and persecution for these four detainees, the U.S. government has denied them asylum. What makes the government's denial of asylum even more strange is the fact that at least Zhen Fong Zheng's and Shiou Yon Zhou's cases are legally cases of political asylum. According to Randy Riesner, a Fresno attorney who has worked on the detainees' cases, "President Clinton [in September 1996] signed into law a provision that requires the INS to consider someone fleeing forced birth control as fleeing political persecution. The problem is that these people were excluded from the United States before the law was put into effect." However, could the law apply retroactively? Yes, it could, says Riesner; "it has for others."
Those "others" were 53 Chinese refugees on board the ship, the Golden Venture. The INS incarcerated these 53 refugees upon their arrival in New York harbor in June 1993. In February 1997 President Clinton ordered their release, on parole, from prison. Since that date, most of the Golden Venture refugees have had their final asylum hearings and have been granted asylum.
The four detainees at Lerdo face imminent deportation to China. Why has the INS not yet deported them? Because, says Frank Muna, another Fresno attorney who has taken on their case, before the INS can deport them it must obtain travel documents and copies of their birth certificates from China. The INS has obtained none of these to date.
There is a habeas corpus petition pending for the three women detainees in the United States District Court in Fresno. Randy Riesner says with such a petition, a federal judge reviews reasons for detention, and determines whether or not it is legal. "If he determines that their detention is not legal," says Riesner, "that it violates their constitutional rights, he will sign an order to to have them released. In this case, there's a pretty good argument that detention constitutes cruel and unusual punishment."
Attorney Frank Muna opines that two of the four detainees have a good chance for release, though he wouldn't say which two. Since the INS can release detainees from prison 90 days after denial of asylum, all of these, he says, should have been released to the community. There is also a question, says Muna, whether heretofore they have been afforded competent counsel, a fact that should play in their favor.
Tim Palmquist, director of Voice for Life, a Bakersfield pro-life group that has espoused the cause of the detainees, fears that the volunteer lawyer, who has until recently handled the detainees' cases, was not doing enough to help them. In October two Madera men, Doug Matheson and Larry Miller, hired Randy Riesner and Frank Muna to take on the case. In November, Riesner was relieved, and Muna will now handle the case alone.
That persons, whose only crime is a violation of U.S. immigration laws, should be kept in a maximum security prison--a facility housing prisoners with felony convictions-- would seem to most observers "cruel and unusual punishment."
Added to that, Su Bin Li complained of cruel treatment from fellow inmates and neglect from guards. On one occasion, said Su Bin, other inmates refused to give him the key to the bathroom; he had to scream, he said, to get the guards' attention. On another occasion, other prisoners kept him from watching a Chinese language program on television; when he lay down to take a nap, they turned up the volume of the program they were watching so that he could not rest.
Su Bin also complained about sediment in the prison drinking water; he had to let the sediment settle, he said, before he could drink any water. Tim Palmquist said the water at Lerdo is bad. "There are times," says Palmquist, "when you can turn on the water, even in the bathroom in the visiting area, and see that it comes out gray. We discovered a state health department document from January 1995 that specifically told Lerdo that the water condition was not acceptable and they they needed to deal with it. Lerdo ignored it. When we brought the water problem public, their reaction was to say that they would look into it, and then to say that they would run a process to clean it up. A few months later, after saying they would do it, they just ignored it." What Lerdo did do, says Palmquist, is discontinue selling bottled water, which prisoners could purchase for 89 cents a half-liter.
Besides legal means, advocates for the detainees are pursuing the political avenue to free the prisoners. "In immigration matters," Riesner says, "everything is administrative and run by the executive branch of the United States government. A call from President Clinton to Janet Reno saying, 'let these people go' would be all that was necessary. There's a move to ask President Clinton to issue an order to let them go. We're trying to locate a U.S. senator who has a relationship with the president that would be willing to take the cause on."
Local politicians in the Central Valley have shown little interest, says Riesner, though Republican Congressman George Radonovitch's office has indicated a willingness to help. However, the aid of a Republican is little help in reaching Clinton. Riesner says that he has not yet approached Congressman Cal Dooley, a Democrat, but, since Dooley wouldn't involve himself with the Golden Venture case, Riesner holds out little hope for his support.
Tim Palmquist and Voice for Life have been involved with helping the detainees since 1994, when the four were moved to the Lerdo Detention Facility. Initially, says Palmquist, Voice for Life held a prayer vigil for the detainees. "We didn't know what else we could do at that point, because we were told by the INS that we couldn't visit with [the detainees]. They said we needed written permission from each of their lawyers." However, when an ex-missionary couple, who had not consulted with the INS, visited the detainees, Palmquist learned that "we could have walked in and visited them at any time."
Since then, says Palmquist, "we have tried to encourage them, one on one, to find out what their needs are, and do whatever we can to meet those needs. In some cases, it's been that they have not talked to their families in China for years, and we were able to help them make a phone call to China. We've been able to help them with money on their accounts for various things, such as drinking water."
However, says Palmquist, it has not always been easy to help the detainees. "We wanted them to have Chinese-language Bibles to read, and the chaplain [at Lerdo] had been difficult to deal with, and he kept putting road blocks in our way. Eventually we were able to get Chinese-language Bibles into them. The next step was to get Chinese-language church services for them in the jail, because many of them were asking for that." It took about a year and a half until they were able to get these services.
Palmquist says he has never entertained serious doubt about the detainees' stories. Randy Riesner, too, is confident of their stories. "I've talked to them all a number of times, and the stories haven't changed. Now, do they embellish parts of it? Probably. But I think the basic story about fleeing China, about forced birth control issues, is true, because you hear it consistently from these and other Chinese immigrants you talk to; it is something that has been well documented in books by experts. It's something that we've known about for a long time."
Of course, it's not Riesner or Palmquist who will decide whether the stories of Shiou Yon Zhou, Tin Chin Wang, Su Bin Li, and Zhen Fong Zheng are true or believable; it is the federal judge who will decide their fate. Will lack of hard evidence dissuade this judge from granting asylum? None can say, but many would probably agree with the sentiment expressed by Tim Palmquist: "I'd hate to be in the position of a judge and have to send somebody back to China because I wasn't sure that their story was true." *
For more information on the Chinese detainees at the Lerdo Detention Facility, one may contact Tim Palmquist at Voice for Life, (805) 837-2229. Voice for Life also maintains a web site with information on the detainees; it is http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/VoiceForLife.