Zheng

I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

Zheng testified before the IJ to the following events. He was born in the town of Lunchen in Fuqing city, which is 1894 ZHENG v. ASHCROFT located in the southeastern province of Fujian. On May 1, 1992 when Zheng was 21 years old, he married Wen who was 19 at the time. They were each respectively one year shy of the legal age for marriage. They had a small, traditional Chi- nese wedding ceremony but did not apply for a marriage cer- tificate because they were underage. When Wen was five months pregnant, birth control officials forcibly took her from Zheng’s family home in Lunchen on October 7, 1992 to have an abortion. Zheng was not home at the time and was working in a different town within Fuqing City. He heard about the incident from his wife’s brother the next morning and went home immediately. By the time he arrived home in the after- noon, Wen had already returned from the hospital. She told him that the officials had come to their house late in the eve- ning, taken her to a government building and held her there along with other pregnant women until they took her to the hospital for the abortion the next…