A California court has ordered U.S. immigration
authorities to reconsider their refusal to grant applications for asylum from
Dashdavaa Javhlan, finding that the Mongolian woman presented compelling
evidence that she would be persecuted if returned to Mongolia. Javhlan says
Communist Party agents threatened her for years with imprisonment, rape and
torture for refusing to spy on her United Nations co-workers.

Javhlan was working for the United Nations
Development Program in Mongolia in 2000 when secret police agents allegedly
approached her on her way to and from work and threatened her with assault,
imprisonment, rape and death because she refused to spy for them.  She said the agents wanted her to provide
information about U.N. representatives.

Javhlan, whose Buddhist monk grandfather was
tortured and killed by agents of the communist government in 1937, offered
equally convincing testimony that she had long been a target of her country”s
secret police, the majority in the court ruled. She testified that a year
before fleeing Mongolia with her husband, the stress of her predicament caused
a partial stroke in the left part of her face.

Dissenting Judge Sandra Ikuta found the evidence of
persecution less compelling.    
“Neither the secret police nor anyone else ever acted on the vague,
nonspecific threats reported by Javhlan. As the [immigration judge] noted,
Javhlan and her extended family in Mongolia lived quite normal lives. In fact,
what Javhlan reported are the quintessential empty threats which we have held
do not amount to persecution,” she said.

The majority found Javhlan eligible for asylum,
granted her request to halt deportation and remanded her petition to the Board
of Immigration Appeals.