Opinion ID: 3011740
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Asylum from South Africa

Text: The BIA rejected Abdille's request for asylum from South Africa based on the attacks and the alleged harassment he experienced during his ten months in that country. As discussed supra in Part II, to be eligible for asylum in the United States as a refugee, an alien must demonstrate persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. 8 U.S.C. S 1101(a)(42)(A). The BIA agreed with the IJ that Abdille had 24 failed to carry his burden with respect to establishing either past persecution or a well-founded fear of futur e persecution. Because this issue was squarely pr esented in Abdille's Petition for Review and was fully ar gued, and because the question whether Abdille experienced persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution is independent of the question whether Abdille wasfirmly resettled in that country, we do not believe that remand of this issue to the BIA is warranted. We ther efore proceed to the merits. In light of the deference we owe to the BIA's factual findings under the standard of r eview established in INS v. Elias-Zacarias, 502 U.S. 478 (1992), and for the reasons that follow, we cannot say that the r ecord evidence compels a conclusion contrary to the BIA's and, accordingly, we decide that the BIA's decision with respect to Abdille's request for asylum from South Africa must stand.
Abdille first argues that the BIA's deter mination that Abdille had not established past persecution was not supported by the record evidence. Under 8 C.F.R. S 208.13(b)(1) (2000), [a]n applicant shall be found to be a r efugee on the basis of past persecution if he or she can establish that he or she has suffered persecution in the past in his or her country of . . . last habitual residence on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, and that he or she is unable or unwilling to return to or avail himself or herself of the protection of that country owing to such persecution. Abdille's claim of persecution in South Africa does not arise out of any official action or policy instituted by the South African government. Rather, Abdille alleges persecution at the hands of private groups of attackers that the South African government was either unable or unwilling to control. See Singh v. INS, 94 F .3d 1353, 1360 (9th Cir. 1996) (Persecution meted out by groups that the government is unable or unwilling to contr ol constitutes 25 persecution under the [Immigration and Nationality] Act. Non-governmental groups need not file articles of incorporation before they can be capable of persecution.) (citation omitted). To establish past persecution, Abdille set forth evidence establishing that he had suffered individualized attacks, coupled with documentary evidence attempting to link his personal experiences of harassment and violence with the experiences of other similarly situated Somali and African refugees living in South Africa. Abdille's individualized evidence, primarily testimonial in nature, demonstrated that Abdille had suffered two separate attacks while working as a street vendor in public marketplaces in Cape Town. The first occurred in July 1998, when a group of five or six South Africans assaulted Abdille, knocking him unconscious and stealing his merchandise. Abdille went to the police station to make a report concer ning the incident, but the officers told him to return at a later time.13 The second attack took place five months later , when a different group attacked Abdille in a separate market. Abdille fled before he could be injured, but the gr oup did steal all of his goods. Abdille's documentary evidence, consisting of r eports on South Africa issued by human rights groups and newspaper stories printed in South African newspapers, described in general the xenophobic attitudes taken by South African citizens and politicians towar d African immigrants, and specifically identified instances of violent acts committed against foreigners, including foreign street vendors working in cities such as Cape Town. Among the _________________________________________________________________ 13. The Certified Administrative Record is unclear as to whether Abdille did in fact return to the police station to prosecute his claim. In proceedings before the IJ, Abdille testified on direct examination that after he reported the July 1998 attack to the police, they told me every day come back, come back and they haven't did anything for me, suggesting that Abdille did make subsequent visits that were ultimately unavailing. On the other hand, while being cr oss-examined by the INS concerning this first police report, Abdille appeared to concede that he did not in fact return to the station:I never went back that day but are there [sic] more than 10 times they say come back and they didn't do anything for me. 26 most pertinent such documents contained in the Certified Administrative Record are: (1) a Mar ch 1998 report issued by Human Rights Watch; (2) a December 1998 r eport put forth by the South African Human Rights Commission; and (3) two stories from the August 6, 1998 issue of Cape Times, a Cape Town newspaper. The Human Rights Watch and South African Human Rights Commission reports document harassment of street vendors similar to that experienced by Abdille.14 The BIA, after noting that Abdille had intr oduced evidence of criminal behavior by private individuals in South Africa and disturbing documentary evidence of xenophobia in South Africa, concluded that Abdille had failed to sufficiently establish past persecution on account _________________________________________________________________ 14. The Human Rights Watch report, titled Prohibited Persons: Abuse of Undocumented Migrants, Asylum-Seekers, and Refugees in South Africa, contains the following passage: Foreign hawkers, often asylum applicants with temporary residence permits, have repeatedly been the tar gets of violent protests and other forms of intimidation as local hawkers attempt to clean the streets of foreigners. During r epeated violent protests in Johannesburg, South African traders and or dinary criminals have brutally beaten foreign hawkers, and stolen their goods. Hawkers interviewed by Human Rights Watch who wer e the targets of such abuse universally complained to us that the police had done little or nothing in response to their complaints. . . . Human Rights Watch interviewed members of a large community of Somali asylumseekers who had been forced to abandon their trade and who told Human Rights Watch that they now never left their overcrowded and impoverished compound unless they were in a lar ge group, in order to protect themselves from attacks by hostile locals. A similar account of violence against foreign street vendors appears in the South African Human Rights Commission's r eport, titled 1999 Plan of Action: Roll Back Xenophobia Campaign: Vigilante groups have vowed to clear for eign traders off the streets of Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Cape T own. They inflame public opinion with the perception that for eign traders take away jobs from locals by unfairly competing for customers, space and markets. As part of ongoing, hostile campaigns, mobs are raiding foreign hawkers, often causing bodily har m, vandalising their stalls and stealing their goods. 27 of one of the five protected factors listed in the statutory definition of refugee, because he could not demonstrate that the violence he suffered was perpetrated by persons that the government was unwilling or unable to control. To buttress this conclusion, the BIA pointed to the fact that there was no evidence that Abdille was harassed or disturbed in Johannesburg during his thr ee-week stay there; that the two attacks Abdille experienced were committed by two separate groups of people; that Abdille could not identify his assailants; and that after r eporting the attacks to the police, Abdille failed to pr osecute these charges by returning to the station, as requested by the police.15 _________________________________________________________________ 15. The BIA does not appear entirely corr ect with respect to the latter two points. The BIA's claim that Abdille could not identify his assailants is partially undermined by Abdille's testimony before the IJ concerning his response to the first attack in July 1998: When I went down [to] the police station, . . . I told them I even know the people who attack me because some of them they collect the money in the bus station where I sell my merchandise. The INS concedes that Abdille could identify the perpetrators of this first assault. The recor d appears silent on the issue of whether Abdille could identify the December 1998 attackers. With respect to the BIA's assertion that Abdille failed to return to the police station following his reports of the attack, as directed, the record is not as clear as the BIA appears to assume. As mentioned supra in note 13, the evidence is ambiguous as to whether Abdille visited the police station after reporting the first attack. With regard to the second assault, Abdille testified that he reported the incident to the police, and [t]hey said they make appointment and they told me come back tomorrow. The record is silent as to whether Abdille returned the next day as instructed. Although the BIA's characterization of the r ecord evidence may not have fully accomodated these ambiguities in the r ecord, such error does not ultimately affect our decision to uphold the BIA's denial of Abdille's request for asylum from South Africa. For the reasons stated in the text above, the evidence Abdille did introduce to establish past persecution and a well-founded fear of persecution simply does not compel a conclusion contrary to the BIA's, even if we discount the evidence supporting the BIA's determination so as to take account of its failure to recognize either the fact that Abdille could identify the perpetrators of the first assault, or that Abdille may have made some effort to follow up on his report of the first incident to the police. 28 To be sure, the record evidence put forth by Abdille is consistent with his theory of persecution. Abdille's testimony demonstrates that he experienced individualized harassment, and the documentary evidence rescribed in the margin, supra at note 14, tends to show that these attacks could have been the product of a more generalized animus among segments of the South African public dir ected at foreign asylum seekers, particularly those r efugees working as street vendors in cities like Cape T own. Furthermore, Abdille's testimony concerning the police's lackadaisical responses to his reports is in accor d with descriptions found in the human rights reports introduced by Abdille of police inaction in the face of private violence against foreign street vendors. However, the evidence put forth by Abdille is also consistent with acts of private violence that fall short of persecution on account of race, nationality, or membership in a particular social group. The assaults experienced by Abdille at the hands of two different sets of assailants could represent random street violence, motivated not by animosity against a particular ethnic group, but rather by arbitrary hostility or by a desire to r eap financial rewards. Such ordinary criminal activity does not rise to the level of persecution necessary to establish eligibility for asylum. See, e.g., Singh v. INS, 134 F.3d 962, 967 (9th Cir. 1998) (Mere generalized lawlessness and violence between diverse populations, of the sort which abounds in numer ous countries and inflicts misery upon millions of innocent people daily around the world, generally is not sufficient to permit the Attorney General to grant asylum . . . .); Sangha v. INS, 103 F.3d 1482, 1487 (9th Cir. 1997) ([P]ersecution on account of political opinion no longer can be inferred merely from acts of random violence . . . .). It is also important to note that Abdille was not har med in South Africa except when he was engaged in vending activities in public marketplaces. In an attempt to establish that he was the victim of persecution, and not just the target of or dinary street violence, Abdille asserts that his situation is identical to the one found in the BIA's recent decision in In re O-Z- & I-Z-, Int. Dec. No. 3346, 1998 WL 177674 (BIA Apr. 2, 1998), in 29 which the BIA concluded that acts of harassment committed by the Rukh, a pro Ukranian independence group, against a Jewish Ukrainian citizen who advocated unification with Russia, rose to the level of persecution. What Abdille fails to explain, however, is that the record evidence in O-Z- & I-Z- made readily apparent the fact that the Rukh assailants were motivated by a desire to penalize the victim's religion. For example, the evidence showed that anti-Semitic leaflets distributed by the Rukh were left in the victim's clothing and at his home; that the victim suffered two assaults resulting in physical injuries while on his way home from work and at a bus stop near his home, during which anti-Semitic remarks wer e directed at him; and that the victim's son suffer ed physical and verbal abuse at school as a result of his Jewish background. In contrast to the direct pr oof of ubiquitous religion-based animus presented by the asylum applicant in O-Z- & L-Z-, in the proceedings befor e the IJ, Abdille offered no such comparable evidence, relying instead on descriptions of a generalized climate of hostility in South Africa toward African refugees and for eign street vendors found in human rights groups' reports and newspaper articles. Aside from such documentary evidence, Abdille furnished no evidence demonstrating that the two attacks he experienced in July and December of 1998 wer e not mere acts of random lawlessness, but rather were perpetrated on account of his race, nationality, or membership in a particular social group. Such tenuous evidence may support an inference that the assaults Abdille suffered rose to the level of persecution, but it does not compel such a conclusion. Accordingly, given our defer ential review, the BIA's decision as to past persecution must stand.
Abdille also avers that the BIA's determination that Abdille failed to establish a well-founded fear of persecution was not supported by record evidence. Under 8 C.F.R. S 208.13(b)(2) (2000), [a]n applicant shall be found to have a well-founded fear of persecution if he or she can establish first, that 30 he or she has a fear of persecution in his or her country of . . . last habitual residence on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion; second, that there is a reasonable possibility of suffering such persecution if he or she were to return to that country; and third, that he or she is unable or unwilling to retur n to or avail himself or herself of the protection of that country because of such fear. Establishing a well-founded fear of persecution does not require the alien to demonstrate that persecution is more likely than not to occur; rather, fear of persecution can be well-founded even `when there is a less than 50% chance of the occurrence taking place.'  Chang v. INS, 119 F.3d 1055, 1066 (3d Cir. 1997) (quoting INS v. Cardozo-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 431 (1987)). Furthermore, the demonstration of a well-founded fear of persecution carries both a subjective and an objective component. The alien must show that he has a subjective fear of persecution that is supported by objective evidence that persecution is a reasonable possibility. Id. There is no question that Abdille's fear of future persecution in the event of a return to South Africa is subjectively genuine; the only issue is whether that subjective state of mind is buttressed by objective evidence that a r easonable person in Abdille's circumstances would also fear persecution. In reaching its conclusion that Abdille had not established a well-founded fear of future persecution, the BIA relied primarily on the fact that Abdille had failed to establish that his fear of persecution exists country-wide, and is not confined solely to the Cape Town area. The requirement of demonstrating a country-wide fear of persecution is evident from the BIA's r ecent decision in In re C-A-L-, Int. Dec. No. 3305, 1997 WL 80985 (BIA Feb. 21, 1997), in which a Guatemalan citizen and for mer soldier who had participated in missions against the guerrillas operating in that country sought asylum from Guatemala, claiming that he feared that guerrilla gr oups would persecute him due to his past military service against them. The BIA rejected the applicant's asylum claim, on the ground that documentary evidence demonstrated that 31 guerrilla activity in Guatemala was localized in particular regions of the country; that the evidence of guerilla activity specifically targeting the soldier showed that such activity was confined to the soldier's hometown; and that the applicant had acknowledged that he had been able to move to and live in other regions of Guatemala without incident. Stating that an alien seeking to meet the definition of a refugee must do more than show a well-founded fear of persecution in a particular place within a country, the BIA concluded that the applicant's asylum claim must. . . be denied because he has not provided any convincing evidence to suggest that his fear of persecution would exist throughout Guatemala. Further, in Etugh v. INS, 921 F .2d 36 (3d Cir. 1990), we employed an almost identical analysis in a case involving a Nigerian citizen seeking asylum from his native country. The applicant claimed that he feared persecution upon return to Nigeria, due to factional fighting between residents of his hometown Akirika and townspeople in the nearly village of Abala. See id. at 37. The BIA had concluded that the applicant had failed to make the requisite prima facie showing of a well-founded fear, in part because he had not established that his safety would be threatened in parts of Nigeria outside of Akirika. We agreed, stating that the applicant failed to allege[that] he would be persecuted beyond the local vicinity of his hometown, Akirika and that deportation would not r equire [the applicant] to return to the purportedly dangerous region of Nigeria where he formerly lived. Id. at 39. Abdille claims that the record evidence supports a fear of persecution throughout South Africa. Having examined the exhibits in the Certified Administrative Recor d, we cannot agree. By and large, the majority of Abdille's evidence--and certainly the most probative items--focused on harassment and violence only in the Cape Town region of South Africa, which contains but a small part of the country's population. Acts of past persecution suffer ed by an alien are often the best objective evidence supporting the applicant's fear of future persecution, cf. 208.13(b)(1)(i) (If it is determined that the applicant has established past persecution, he or she shall be presumed also to have a 32 well-founded fear of persecution . . . .), but the individualized acts of persecution Abdille claims to have experienced occurred only in Cape Town, and only at times Abdille was working as a street vendor selling goods in public marketplaces. Moreover, as suggested above, the r ecord contains no evidence indicating that after Abdille moved to Johannesburg in January 1999, his three-week stay there was disturbed, and, more importantly, Abdille admitted that he never attempted to live in any region of South Africa other than Cape Town and Johannesburg. Finally, the most pertinent pieces of documentary evidence--i.e., those reports relating attacks on foreign street vendors, rescribed supra in note 14--describe such assaults as occurring in areas around the cities of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and Johannesburg; they do not mention whether similar antiforeigner campaigns exist in other regions of South Africa. Under Elias-Zacarias's deferential standard, we cannot say that such evidence compels a conclusion contrary to the BIA's determination that Abdille failed to establish a wellfounded fear of persecution. Accordingly, the BIA's decision as to Abdille's well-founded fear must stand.