Opinion ID: 202978
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Conventional Claims of Error

Text: In addition to his charges of legal error, Kho argues that the BIA erred in failing to find that his experiences in Indonesia amounted to persecution. Kho also claims that the Board misread U.S. State Department country conditions reports. Substantial evidence in the record supports the BIA's finding of no past persecution and its reading of the country conditions reports. Establishing persecution requires evidence of experiences surpassing unpleasantness, harassment, and even basic suffering. Nelson v. INS, 232 F.3d 258, 263 (1st Cir.2000); see also Nikijuluw, 427 F.3d at 120. Persecution, within the context of the immigration statutes, does not include all treatment that our society regards as unfair, unjust, or even unlawful or unconstitutional. Sharari v. Gonzales, 407 F.3d 467, 474 (1st Cir.2005) (quoting Fatin v. INS, 12 F.3d 1233, 1240 (3d Cir.1993) (internal quotation mark omitted)). Kho based his withholding claim on his experience of the May 1998 rioting and the fact that two churches he attended were burned as collateral damage of mob violence. Kho supplements these events with one instance of discrimination from his childhood, a verbal insult received on a bus in 1992, and a non-violent mugging that occurred in 1996. By the time Kho left Indonesia in 2001, ostensibly for a vacation in the United States, he had not encountered anti-Christian or anti-Chinese harassment in Indonesia for three years. The BIA reasonably concluded that these isolated incidents did not amount to persecution. The BIA also reasoned that Kho failed to establish that any of the incidents supporting his withholding claim were the result of government action or inaction. See Nikijuluw, 427 F.3d at 121 ([A]n applicant qualifies for asylum only when he suffers persecution that is the direct result of government action, government-supported action, or government's unwillingness or inability to control private conduct.); see also Harutyunyan v. Gonzales, 421 F.3d 64, 68 (1st Cir.2005) ([P]ersecution always implies some connection to government action or inaction.). Kho attributed all of his adult misfortunes to the actions of private citizens. There was no evidence that the police or other officials failed to protect him because of his ethnicity or religion. [7] Neither he nor his family members have ever been detained, interrogated, or otherwise harassed by the government. There is no evidence in this record to compel a finding that the Indonesian government allowed Kho to suffer persecution. Finally, Kho contends that the BIA mischaracterized the country reports to leave[] the impression that interreligious tensions and violence are limited to eastern Indonesia. The contents of the country reports Kho cites do not compel us to disturb the agency's findings of fact. As the BIA pointed out, the reports describe recurring violence between Christians and Muslims, but indicate that such violence is largely confined to islands separate from and eastward of Java, the central island on which Jakarta is located. In any event, and as the BIA recognized, the reports describe government-led efforts to ease interreligious tensions in those regions. The only religious violence in Jakarta mentioned by the reports consists of isolated attacks on churches carried out by local residents and local mobs. The reports, like Kho's individual evidence, fail to establish a link between the church attacks and government complicity or inaction. In fact, one report that Kho cites describes police efforts to repel an attack on a church in Jakarta. The country reports substantially support the BIA's findings. We deny the petition for review.