evidence of “(1) an incident, or incidents, that rise to the level of persecution; (2) that is on account of one of the statutorily-protected grounds; and (3)is committed by the government or forces the government is either unable or unwilling to control.” Afriyie, 613 F.3d at 931 (internal quotation marks omitted); see id. at 936 (“As with asylum, to show past persecution, an applicant for withholding of removal must show that government forces have either directly persecuted him or were unable or unwilling to control private persecutors.”). The only nexus required to establish a past-persecution asylum claim is that the applicant’s persecution be “on account of’ one of the statutorily enumerated grounds. See 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A); Sangha v. INS, 103 F.3d 1482, 1490 (9th Cir.1997) (<HOLDING>). In other words, the second (“on account of’)
holding that the plaintiff had to provide direct or circumstantial evidence that the supervisors who took the adverse action against the plaintiff knew about the protected activity prior to taking that action holding that the applicant must provide some evidence direct or circumstantial that the persecutor was or would be motivated to persecute him because of a protected ground holding that direct and circumstantial evidence are to be given the same weight when reviewing the sufficiency of the evidence holding circumstantial evidence has equivalent standing to direct evidence in criminal prosecution holding that since the statute makes motive critical a petitioner must provide some evidence of it direct or circumstantial