Look On! Asylum Cases Brought to the Theater

(Look On! takes occasional note of noteworthy films and stage productions.)

Playwright Jefferey Solomon has written two exceptional plays based upon real asylum claims and cases brought in United States immigration courts. The first, De Novo, depicts the case of a fourteen-year-old boy named Edgar Chocoy who fled Guatemala City when MS-13, the largest gang in Central America, put a hit on his life. He traveled over 3,000 miles through the desert, and across the borders of three countries in search of his mother who had left him at the age of six months to work in the United States. Detained by the Department of Homeland Security upon his entry, Edgar, normally quiet and timid, spoke clearly and loudly about his fear of being deported: “I’m afraid to go back. They’ll kill me.” A pro bono immigration lawyer helped Edgar argue his asylum case in Denver, but the Immigration Judge ordered Edgar deported to Guatemala. He was murdered seventeen days later. The play weaves together court transcripts, interviews, letters and other documentary sources to reconstruct the gripping and poignant true story of the case whose outcome prompted a national outcry and a fundamental reconsideration about the way in which the government handles the many thousands of unaccompanied minors in immigration custody.
The second play, Tara's Crossing, tells the story of a transgendered asylum seeker from Guyana and her uphill battle to prove her claims of persecution from within the confines of U.S. Immigration Detention. The play, inspired by interviews with asylum seekers from around the world, deals with the hurdles that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered asylum seekers and refugees face in proving that their fears of persecution are well founded particularly when detained.
Solomon’s theater company, Houses on the Moon, based in New York City, aims to educate the public about the perils that vulnerable asylum seekers face navigating US immigration procedures and laws, particularly as most are unrepresented. As IntLawGrrl Jaya Ramji-Nogales has documented in her co-authored pieces on asylum claims, the likelihood that an asylum seeker will be successful when unrepresented by an attorney falls to about 14%.
The Boston premiere of De Novo, presented by New England LawBoston’s Center for Law and Social Responsibility, will take place at the Stuart St. Playhouse on Wednesday February 9th at 6:30 with post play discussion with the artists and law professors to follow. The show is free and open to the public (rsvp to Martha.S.Drane@nesl.edu).

The work of the U.N. minority issues expert

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for this opportunity to contribute this guest post on my current work on behalf of the United Nations)

► This week I sent a letter, along with my colleagues who work on torture and arbitrary detention, to China. We challenged the Chinese government either to explain how its detention of two ethnic Uighurs complies with international law or to release the two urgently. China acknowledges having upwards of 40 different ethnic and religious minorities, in addition to the Tibetans, who face varying levels of oppression and repression.

► Next week I leave for a mission to Kazakhstan.

► Last year this time I was in Guyana, investigating the multi-layered relationships between the Indo-Guyanese (persons of East Indian descent), who currently control the government, and the Afro-Guyanese, who are almost the same percentage of the population but feel persecuted and grossly disadvantaged.

► In France, I saw a country that tourists never see. The lives of the “visible minorities” of France, persons who immigrate from North Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean to the shoddy, ghetto suburbs outside Paris, can’t been seen from the Eiffel Tower. They face discrimination at all levels. They are suspected and feared because of their religion. And even those who are second-generation citizens are never, ever considered “French.”

Since 2005, I have done this work in my capacity as U.N. Independent Expert on Minority Issues. I was appointed to the position by the High Commissioner for Human Rights with the consent of all governments that were members of the U.N. Human Rights Council (née Commission on Human Rights). There are over 40 individuals like myself, from all regions of the world, who are chosen to carry out this critical function for the chief human rights mechanism of the United Nations. Each has a mandate to focus on a specific human right. My mandate is to focus on the rights of minority populations. They are defined as groups that are distinct by ethnicity (race), religion or language and who have an inferior power relationship to other groups in the society. The relative numbers aren’t as meaningful as the subservient power status. So that:

► In South Africa during apartheid, my mandate would have been the protection of the African population, rather than the Afrikaners.

► In Brazil, I focus on the Afro-Brazilians even though the government now admits that they may be 55% or more of the population.

The international legal prescription against racial discrimination is at the core of my mandate, along with the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to Ethnic, Religious or Linguistic Minorities.

Furthermore, the U.N. resolution authorizing my work requires that I take “a gender perspective” in everything that I do. Each year I visit a number of countries where I am received at the level of a Cabinet Member or Minister of State. That gives me an unparalleled opportunity to engage the top officials in countries about their policies regarding minorities. And, of course, I am able to meet with minority communities, with academics who study these issues, and with civil societies more broadly. I present my findings, evaluations and detailed recommendations to the 47 governments that sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council. I also do thematic reports on issues that concern minorities across all regions of the world, like minorities and poverty or minorities and the right to education.

Of course, my mandate also includes minorities in the United States. Indeed, U.S. civil rights laws and my personal experiences as a minority in the United States have enriched my capacity to grapple with the complexities of discrimination as they present themselves in other cultures and countries. When I take on issues here in the United States, however, that home-grown expertise is rarely acknowledged.

An example: The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Housing and I intervened a while back when the City of New Orleans revealed a post-Hurricane Katrina plan to tear down much of the its remaining public housing. Our assessment was that to do that would violate the right to adequate housing that is guaranteed without discrimination by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The local response? New Orleans' daily newspaper, the Times-Picayune, accused me of being a meddling outsider “idiot from the U.N.”

On May 26

On this day in ...
... 1966, on the 1st day of Guyana's independence from Britain, the new state's 1st constitution came into effect. Sandwiched on the northern coast of South America, between Venezuela and Suriname, the country remains a Republic within the Commonwealth of Nations.
... 1916, Phyllis Norton was born. While an undergraduate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, she married Grant B. Cooper, whom she described as "a well-known trial lawyer." She pursued that same career path; Phyllis Norton Cooper earned her J.D. from USC Law School in 1938. In 2001 she wrote of her law studies:

Perhaps one of the reasons we felt so empowered was the support we received from female graduates who visited us on campus and encourage us to succeed ... women like Georgia Bullock, who graduated in 1914 and became the first woman appointed to the Los Angeles Superior Court; 1913 graduate Litta Belle Hibben Campbell, the first woman to graduate No. 1 in the class and the first female deputy district attorney in the nation; 1914 graduate May Lahey, who served on the probate court; 1916 graduate Mabel Walker Willebrandt [far left], who became an assistant U.S. attorney general; and 1918 graduate Anita V. Robbins, who became the first female deputy public defender. They inspired us by the example of their lives in the law.

Herself described as a "trailblazer for women in law," Norton Cooper joined her husband in representing Sirhan Sirhan, who would be convicted of the 1968 assassination of U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy the night of his victory in the California Democratic Presidential primary. (credit for photo of Willebrandt, "an honest, determined U.S. Assistant Attorney General in charge of prohibition," standing behind President Calvin Coolidge)

Déjà vu all over again

Sound familiar? The 1st Lady of a major American democracy is a Senator representing one of the largest metropolitan areas in her country. And now she's running for the Presidency following her husband's departure from that office.
No, we're not talking about that former 1st couple of the the United States.
Aides to Néstor Kirchner, President of Argentina, confirmed yesterday that although he will not seek another term in the Oct. 28 election, his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (left), Senator for the province including the capital city of Buenos Aires, will seek to succeed him.
Though a novelty in the United States, the phenomenon of household dynasty is not unknown elsewhere. This year's unsuccessful candidate for the French Presidency, Ségolène Royal, separated from her longtime partner, Socialist Party leader François Hollande, amid speculation that he wants to run in the next Présidentielle. The notion that a wife might take her husband's seat is not unfamiliar to South Americans, either:
►Following the death of President Juan Perón in 1974, his widow, Isabel Martinez de Perón, served a turbulent term as interim President of Argentina until she was deposed in a military coup in 1976.
►Following the death of President Cheddi Jagan, voters elected Janet Jagan President of Guyana in 1997; she resigned for health reasons 2 years later.
Indeed, Chile's President since 2006, Michelle Bachelet (right), a single mother, is the only woman to have been elected head of state in the region without marital link to a former President.