A Push to Aid American Couple Held in Child’s Death in Qatar

International New York Times | 11 May 2014

Grace and Matthew Huang of Los Angeles in Doha, Qatar, in March. A YouTube video seeks to raise money for their defense. Credit Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

Advocates for an American couple held in Qatar since their adopted African daughter died there in January 2013 after not eating for days have posted a YouTube video about their story, which contains previously unpublicized footage and photographs depicting a happy multiracial family and offers new insights into the circumstances behind her death.

Advocates for the couple said Sunday that the video was meant to raise awareness and help with fund-raising for the defense and exoneration of the couple, Matthew and Grace Huang of Los Angeles, who were convicted of child endangerment in Qatar on March 27 and sentenced to three years in prison.

The Huangs have denied any wrongdoing in connection with the death of their daughter, Gloria, 8, and are pressing to have the sentence annulled. Qatari prosecutors, who originally brought murder charges against the Huangs on suspicion that they had denied Gloria food, are appealing for a stronger sentence and have threatened to bring new charges of child trafficking against the couple, who have two other adopted African children, both older boys.

The State Department has expressed concern about the fairness of the judicial process in the case, which has attracted international attention and exposed what critics have called inherent cultural and racial biases in Qatar, the affluent Persian Gulf emirate. Prosecutors have argued that the Huangs, who are of Asian descent, could not have possibly wanted African children as their own and therefore must have harbored sinister motives in adopting them.

The Huangs brought Gloria, unconscious, to a Doha hospital on Jan. 15, 2013, where she was declared dead after having not eaten for four days. The police arrested the Huangs the next day.

The Huangs, who lived in Qatar because Matthew Huang was working on a construction project there, asserted that the child had an eating disorder, a legacy of her impoverished childhood in Ghana, in which she would alternately fast and binge on food. An autopsy did not determine the cause of death.

They spent nearly a year in a Qatar prison but were released last November. They have not been reimprisoned pending the outcome of the appeal, but have been forbidden to leave the country. Their other children, who had been temporarily placed in a Qatar orphanage, are now living in the United States with Ms. Huang’s mother.

The six-minute video was released a day before the Huangs’s second appearance at a Qatar appellate court, on Sunday, where a judge decided that the defense and prosecutor arguments would be heard together on June 16.

The video features footage and photographs of Gloria and her adopted brothers playing, along with interviews with the Huangs and Ms. Huang’s sister and brother, all expressing concern about the fairness of the prosecution and apprehension over the prolonged separation of the family.

Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project, one of the advocacy groups assisting with the Huangs’ defense, is also interviewed. He calls the prosecution’s reasoning “outrageous” and says “the case completely lacks any type of due process.”

The Huangs and their friends have said that Gloria was a happy child, and pathologists hired by the defense have said that there was no merit to the prosecution’s arguments that she had died from food deprivation. They also said Gloria’s eating disorder was not uncommon among adopted children from poor backgrounds.

Matthew Huang also offered an explanation in the video for why the Huangs did not act sooner when Gloria had stopped eating.

“We did not take Gloria to the hospital when she was refusing to eat because we believed she would come out of these hunger strikes as she had before,” he said. “She was lively and active and there was no reason to suspect any concern for her health.”

The video ends with an appeal to help the couple by donating to their legal fund and signing an online petition to Secretary of State John Kerry, Mohammed Jaham Al Kuwari, the Qatar ambassador to the United States, and Susan L. Ziadeh, the American ambassador to Qatar. As of Sunday, more than 166,300 people had signed it.

Correction: May 12, 2014 

An earlier version of this article misstated the date of an appellate court proceeding where defense and prosecutor arguments would be heard together. It is June 16, not June 17.