Court Opinion

ID: 9799966
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 07:47:08.246893+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:39:55.644265
License: Public Domain

*434MERRITT, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join Judge Moore’s opinion sending this case back to the BIA for reconsideration. In addition to the reasons she gives based on asylum, the most recent State Department Country Report for 2013 for Zimbabwe states that President Robert Mugabe was reelected on July 31, 2013, in an election that “was neither fair nor credible,” using “a process effectively negating the right of citizens to choose their government.” The 2013 Report describes the current situation in the country as follows:
The most important human rights problems remained the government’s targeting for torture, abuse, arrest, and harassment members of non-ZANU-PF parties and civil society activists; partisan application of the rule of law by security forces and the judiciary; the government’s compulsory acquisition of private property and restrictions on civil liberties.
A 21-page Report follows this language. It describes in detail human rights violations that run the gamut from widespread rape to widespread slavery. This is certainly no place for the United States to send this family of five, who are non-ZANU-PF with a history of political activism. The Report describes violations of the Convention Against Torture that this family could probably not escape. The BIA should reconsider its former position when it took no action. The 2013 Country Report would be a good place for the BIA to start its reconsideration.