A woman who has claimed China has persecuted her because she removed a government-required intrauterine device is continuing her fight for asylum in the United State. While an immigration judge and immigration appeals panel believed she and her 9-year-old son should be deported, the Daily News reports, "The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered the lower courts to take another look and explain why China's policy of forcing women to get the devices doesn't amount to persecution."
According to the case, Mei Fun Wong gave birth to a son in 1990 shortly after her husband (who fled to the U.S. because he was supposedly involved in the Tiannamen Square uprising) and, in 1991, the government forced her to get an IUD which she found painful. So she paid a private doctor to remove it in 1992, and during a required quarterly gynecological exam, its disappearance was noticed.
Five years later, in January 1998, Wong attempted to leave China to avoid what she characterized as the "continual torture and torment" of wearing an IUD. Id. Stopped in Hong Kong, she was jailed there for four months, again without harm, before being returned to the mainland. There, she was fined 20,000 RMB for leaving China illegally and for continuing to miss gynecological examinations. Wong stated that she paid the fine under threat that she would otherwise be jailed and her son prohibited from attending school.
Wong asserted that, thereafter, she continued to feel that family planning officials were "harassing" and "menacing" her, although she provided no particulars. Id. at 3. Characterizing her life as "unbearable," Wong stated that she "decided to leave China and to end the torture." Id. Accordingly, in January 2000, Wong fled to the United States, where she sought asylum.
Sometime in 2000, in New York, Wong had her IUD removed. The following year, she and her husband conceived a second child, who was due to be born in April 2002. In March 2002, Wong testified that if she were removed to China before delivering her child, she would be forced to undergo an abortion; if she were removed after delivering her child, she would be involuntarily sterilized.
Her lawyer said, "You can't just say this is a routine medical procedure. What is routine about going to a person's home, detaining them, and not letting them go until they submit?" Immigration judges have said that IUD insertion doesn't warrant asylum/does not fall under persecution, but the 2nd Circuit pointed guards who forced Chinese women to get IUDs have been denied asylum in the U.S. because they persecuted women, plus being imprisoned for not wanting an IUD could be defined as persecution.
