(Courtesy: Modesto Bee)
SAN/FRANCISCO,CA: In a ruling that could help many Sikh refugees, A federal appeals court said last week, that a Sikh who was tortured for political reasons in India’ did not have to prove the entire country was unsafe to be eligible for asylum.
“This is going to allow thousands of Sikhs to qualify for asylum,” said Robert Jobe, lawyer for Hardev Singh.
Singh arrived in Los Angeles and was held in immigration custody for nearly two years before a federal judge ordered his release in April 1994
Jobe said, The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that Singh was ineligible for asylum on the grounds of political persecution.
Jobe said the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was the first by an appellate court on the legality of the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals’ policy toward Sikhs.
The board ruled in 1992 that Sikhs who had been arrested and tortured by Indian authorities because of their political views did not qualify for asylum in the United States unless they could prove they would be in danger everywhere in India, Jobe said.
Because such proof is nearly impossible, the policy has meant the routine denial of asylum.
But the court said danger throughout a country can be presumed when officers of the national government are responsible for the persecution.
It has never been thought that there are safe places within a nation when it is the nation’s government that has engaged in the acts of punishing opinion that have driven the victim to leave the country said Judge John Noonan in the 3-0 ruling.
Article extracted from this publication >> May 5, 1995
