suffered persecution in the philippines or faces a well founded fear future persecution in the philippines on account of his expressed of political opinion or on account of the imputed political opinion there are a employee of the philippine government he works for the department of agrarian reform he was a clerk who kept track of land titles his supervisor mr lorenzo did field inspections of government projects is it just because once once a political organization in the course of carrying out criminal activity to finance their activities take adverse action in this case during a  supervisor is that enough then to convert their action into political activity or simply criminal activity to further a political aim but it's not directed at the victim herself because of his politics  part of the government and he's a piece of poster there are just part of the governor this case is substantially different from the bring on this case which i remember well because i wrote the opinion that casey was an informer against the n p a and it was uniquely political here there was this logging business was involved and that was working for the government in opposition to doing inspections and going into an area where that where they were they were operating and that you know in the last case you know the fact that she said that she was pro government he's employed by the government a statement that he that he's working for the government and they came and saw him a face to face confrontation and they said you join us and you don't tell what's going on and will kill you will do the same we did to and i think what you do is repugnant and in this case this individual is a member of the government and he's actually going out in the field in taking action against them by inspecting those areas where they're active and they see him as as a threat to their domination over that region and their activities and the hardest evidence of that is the n p a you know that on page ninety six  there was they tried to recruit his younger brother and with no question that was the n p a and that and that part the the board's decision on this is really strange and some of the working with the government to try to stop their operations when they tried to recruit him what did he tell them he said as to his reason for not going along with them he said i have to think and i have this news because i was and i was pro she said i'm pro government this man by his employment would win the case that he's pro government and so you're saying just employments enough the employment and the nature of it as well the fact that he was actually going out to i'm just trying to understand what your argument is so you're saying as long as it's a government worker and he goes out and he's interfering with criminal activity in this case illegal logging and then they come to his door and say  acknowledged at least certainly he understood it that they didn't want him to interfere any further in their logging activities or telling a buddy right that's political yes yes i  component as far as working for the government and simply saying you know i happen to favor the government or u s policy and i favor the war in iraq as opposed to someone who was in the arming goes and morning your honor this may please the court for the respondent your honor as i think with this case boils down to is effectively an effort to force recruitment perhaps coupled with an effort at witness tampering but neither of those constitute persecution on account of political beliefs we know from the a lot adding in the thank you it didn't kill the boss and that me make it an extreme incident of witness tampering but that doesn't make it persecution on account of a political belief and if you break it down into its two components you have the force recruitment which we know from allies secularize does not constitute persecution on account of political beliefs and as this court has noted on an occasion such as the song a case judge goodwin indeed forced recruitment itself is a little bit at odds with the idea that you've singled somebody out because of their adverse political views because generally when think an organization like the n p a wants to fill its ranks with people who disagree with them  case differ from what i think it differs in critical respect from for a judge trot i mean ultimately being a better position to judge that because in borat when she's confronted in the force recruitment effort she then makes it clear that she disagrees with them and doesn't want to join them because of her politico opposition to them and then as this court goes on to emphasise it's that statement of political opposition that really takes it out of the standard force recruitment case and draws a clear nexus between what's going on and the persecution that follows including the physical injuries and abuse and that statement of political opposition and again this court not only focused on that statement of political opposition as the key to distinguishing ally's zachari but also noted that that statement gave the case the unmistakable ity of a dinosaur in a haystack and in this case without that statement there simply is no dinosaur in the haystack and indeed the more obvious inference here is a bush was suggesting questions both in this case and the previous case is that you have an effort at witness tampering the individuals here were not singled out and i agree that they were what happened to  tampering they're not singling out the people for their political opinion they're singling them out because of their status as a witness to a potential criminal activity and how those rooms were in your view well i think briones was distinguishable predominantly based on that sort of first of all you have the severity of the of the threats there which are sort of ongoing and repeated but principally there as this court made clear there was no doubt that briones was somebody who was singled out by the  for political opposite opposition use of confidential government informant his information had led to the capture of a major n p a leader and i guess most obviously briones was an individual who was on the similar information in this record that suggests that they are singling out the petitioner here for his political beliefs or his role in helping the government deal with the n p a in a broad scale and as i say the one thing that logic he is their efforts directed at him are not directed at him because he's in a complement employee they are focused on him because he's a witness to a crime who happens to be a government employee but i would think if you had a situation where there was an illegal logging operation going on in the n p a was generating revenue through that and just an ordinary civilian stumbled upon it you might have exactly the same kind of witness tampering effort and it really would just happenstance that the individual both i mean if you want not only him to shut up about what went on in the past they want him to exercise this government function in the future i think that's right i mean i think we could quibble about exactly what his role is and i think that it's  way the immigration judge thought his role was actually pretty ministerial but even if you assume he had sort of more of a real law enforcement role i think that you suggest that there's one less link in the chain that involved that's involved in the witness tampering i mean because know ordinarily you try to intimidate somebody not to go to the police with the idea that that's where you're going to stop the prosecution taking place obviously if the witness is a police officer you can quote sort of kill two birds with one stone so to speak and go right to the law enforcement officer and try to intimidate the law enforcement officer and i think that's just a difference of methodology and it may sort of change the way that the n p a would react in the two cases slightly but again it's not that he's a government employee tha reason they're trying to go after him certainly not because of his political views either if they're going after him for any reason it's because of his role in the system but he could be pro n p a pro government really doesn't matter it's his role in the system that's critical and as i said thousand and twenty four and opinion by judge to shima make clear that the fact that case involved alleged persecution against a national police officer in the national police of peru involving an alleged so and what the court there held is the simple fact that this individual was a government employee a law enforcement officer was not enough to find or to compel the conclusion that there was an could political opinion to that individual just because of the service in the government and i think if that's true with respect to somebody like the individual there who's a member of the crew the national police i think it's true our  petitioner here who appears to be more of a clerical employee in an agrarian reform department which i think it's probably less definitively associated with the views of the government pro government beliefs then the national police unit so in the end i would simply say i mean certainly there are other ways to look at this case but i think at bottom the problem with this case from the titian or standpoint is that the evidence in the record certainly supports the idea that what's happened here is force recruitment and witness tampering not retaliation or not anything that is persecution on account of a political belief another case in this court that i think is in if you want to individual  a person if you put it in these terms might have reasons not to want to join up and so as the court in you know lies dr i said people may have many reasons not to want to join up with an organization and of course recruitment situation and so the fact that they don't join up and the fact that they may be retaliated against for not joining up doesn't make them somebody who's been retaliated on before political  retaliated against or persecuted against because they resist a forced recruitment effort it is least that's possible an inference that the reason they are going to go against them is not because of a political view but they're going to go against them to make good on their threat to try to in future cases have a reputation as somebody who when they say you better join up or die they mean it but as allies sacrifice makes clear that doesn't convert it into persecution on account of i think whether it's a transitional case or not the one thing that's clear is it is a case that does not start on that status but turns on the fact that you have an individual and i ask that question because of the voluntary departure question where there is voluntary departure was granted in this case yes so i mean the volatility departure if the board is a decision is a firm voluntary departure will take place that's a little simplistic answer because number one application was it didn't take very much it's very little it's a c attached declaration and what to do there was no real declaration of any use i mean there's an adverse credibility find wrong yes and the court well no there's not