PRASTIWI v. TORTURE CLAIMS APPEAL BOARD

HCAL 1565/2019

[2024] HKCFI 1726

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO 1565 OF 2019

Application for Leave to Apply for Judicial Review
NOTIFICATION of the Judge’s decision (Ord 53 r 3)

Following:

	consideration of the documents only;            or
	consideration of the documents and oral submissions by the Applicant in open court;

Leave to apply for judicial review be refused.

Observations for the Applicant:

1.  The Applicant is a 43-year-old national of Indonesia who arrived in Hong Kong on 17 September 2015 with permission to continue to work as a foreign domestic helper until the expiration of her employment contract on 17 September 2017 or within 14 days of its early termination, but when her employment was prematurely terminated on 10 May 2017, she did not depart and instead overstayed, and was arrested by police on 17 April 2018. After she was referred to the Immigration Department for investigation, she raised a non-refoulement claim for protection on the basis that if she returned to Indonesia she would be harmed or killed by her uncle or his creditor for failing to repay her uncle’s unpaid debts. She was subsequently released on recognizance pending the determination of her claim.

2.  The Applicant was born and raised by her uncle and aunt in Dusun Bangun Jaya, Desa Sarimulyo, Agung Sub-District, Talung Bawang Barat Regency, Lampung Province, Indonesia after her parents passed away when she was small. After leaving school she assisted her uncle in his farming in her home district, and continued to stay with her uncle and aunt.

3.  In 2000 she changed to work as a domestic helper in her home district for higher income, and then in 2008 she went to Malaysia and Taiwan to work as a foreign domestic helper.

4.  In 2015 she returned to Indonesia to make arrangements to work in Hong Kong, during which she was informed by her aunt that her uncle had borrowed a loan from a local money-lender to pay for the medical expenses of the victim injured by him in a traffic accident, and had named her as his loan guarantor for which she was required to help her uncle with his loan repayments.

5.  In September 2015 the Applicant arrived in Hong Kong to start her employment as a foreign domestic helper, during which she would remit money to her uncle in Indonesia to assist him to repay his loan by instalments, but by mid-2016 when she was unable to do so, both her uncle and his creditor had made threating phone calls to her that they would kill her when she returned to Indonesia for failing to send money to repay her uncle’s loan.

6.  Henceforth when her employment was prematurely terminated in May 2017, the Applicant was afraid to return to Indonesia and therefore overstayed in Hong Kong, and upon her subsequent arrest by the police she then raised her non-refoulement claim for protection, for which she completed a Non-refoulement Claim Form (“NCF”) on 7 July 2018 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation from the Duty Lawyer Service (“DLS”).

7.  By a Notice of Decision dated 2 August 2018 the Director of Immigration (“Director”) rejected the Applicant’s claim on all the applicable grounds including risk of torture under Part VIIC of the Immigration Ordinance, Cap 115 (“Torture Risk”), risk of her absolute or non-derogable rights under the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance, Cap 383 (“HKBOR”) being violated including right to life under Article 2 (“BOR 2 Risk”), risk of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under Article 3 of HKBOR (“BOR 3 Risk”), and risk of persecution with reference to the non-refoulement principle under Article 33 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (“Persecution Risk”).

8.  In his decision the Director took into account of all the relevant circumstances of the Applicant’s claim and assessed the level of risk of harm from her uncle or his creditor over her uncle debts upon her return to Indonesia as low due to the low intensity and frequency of past ill-treatment from them, that there is no evidence of any real intention of either of them to seriously harm or kill her other than to press her for money to repay her uncle’s debts, that in any event it was a private monetary dispute between them without any official involvement that state or police protection would be available to the Applicant if resorted to, and that reliable and objective Country of Origin Information (“COI”) show that reasonable internal relocation alternatives are available in Indonesia with a large population of 260 million people spread across a vast territory that it would not be unduly harsh for the Applicant as an able-bodied adult with working experience to move to other areas of the country away from her home district in large cities such as Jakarta where it would be difficult if not impossible for anyone to locate her.

9.  On 13 August 2018 the Applicant lodged an appeal to the Torture Claims Appeal Board (“Board”) against the Director’s decision, and for which she attended an oral hearing on 28 January 2019 before the Board during which she gave evidence and answered questions raised of her claim by the Adjudicator for the Board. On 31 May 2019 her appeal was dismissed by the Board which also confirmed the Director’s decision.

10.  In its decision the Board accepted the Applicant’s claim of monetary disputes with her uncle and his creditor over her uncle’s debts but found no reliable evidence of any real intention of either of them to seriously harm or kill her, and that in any event it was a private monetary dispute between them without any official involvement that state or police protection would be available to the Applicant upon her return to Indonesia as well as reasonable internal relocation alternatives for her to move safely to other parts of the country away from her home district without any risk of being located by anyone that her claim for non-refoulement protection failed on all applicable grounds.

11.  On 10 June 2019 the Applicant filed her Form 86 for leave to apply for judicial review of the Board’s decision, and put forward various grounds for her intended challenge, of which she confirmed at the hearing as follows:

(1)  That the Board failed to appreciate or place proper or sufficient weight or importance to the presence of State Acquiescence in the Applicant’s case which led to an unfair outcome of rejecting her claim without realizing that she was tortured at the behest of the state law enforcement agencies and politicians that the state would be rendered liable to the Applicant by cause of the state and its public officials failing to provide reasonable protection for its citizens under the duty of due diligence;

(2)  That the Adjudicator acted unreasonable and was procedurally unfair by placing too much reliance on COI but failed to take into account the Applicant’s personal background and experience in assessing her claim;

(3)  That the Board had listed relevant COI which supported the Applicant’s aversions that the police in her country would not be able to protect but failed to consider or give sufficient weight to such evidence and instead ruled otherwise against the Applicant’s case which was a clear case of unfair attitude shown by the Board which in itself is enough to render its decision void;

(4)  That the Board failed to attain the high standard of fairness required by the Wednesbury test in failing to take into account the Applicant’s argument that corruption and incompetency of the administration in the Applicant’s country is still a very serious problem as various human rights organizations had compiled reports that stated testament to the Applicant’s assertions;

(5)  That the Adjudicator was procedurally improper and unfair when assessing whether or not to accept the Applicant’s explanations and unreasonably required her to respond to questions that she was not in a position to offer any response;

(6)  That the Adjudicator failed to make sufficient enquiries before finalizing the determination or to give the Applicant sufficient chance to arrange relevant evidence for her non-refoulement claim as well as her appeal; and

(7)  That the Adjudicator made a ruling to dismiss the Applicant’s appeal based on findings which the Adjudicator ought to allow and thus the decision was irrational.

12.  These are however all just bare and vague assertions of the Applicant containing a few key words or phrases but without any relevant or necessary particulars or specifics or elaborations as to how they apply to her case or how the Board or the Adjudicator had erred in the decision, or in what way was the decision unfair or unreasonable or that the Adjudicator had acted procedurally unfair or irrational, or how did the Adjudicator fail to take into account of relevant COI or being selective or improperly rely on irrelevant COI, or what relevancy were state acquiescence or extra-judicial killings to the Applicant’s case or what evidence is there to suggest that she had ever been tortured by law enforcement agencies or politicians when on the factual basis of even her own case that it was a private monetary dispute between her and her uncle and his creditor only without any official involvement or political element. As such, and as none of these assertions were properly elaborated or presented with any relevant particulars or specifics by the Applicant, I do not find any of them reasonably arguable for her intended challenge.

13.  As has been repeatedly emphasized by the Court of Appeal, judicial review does not operate as a rehearing of a non-refoulement claim when the proper occasion for the Applicant to present and articulate his claim is in the screening process and interview before the Immigration Department and in the process before the Board where the evaluation of the risk of harm is primarily a matter for the Director and the Board as they are entitled to make such evaluation based on the evidence available to them that the court will not usurp their role as primary decision makers in the absence of any legal error or procedural unfairness or irrationality in their decisions being clearly and properly identified by the Applicant, as judicial review is not an avenue for revisiting the assessment by them in the hope that the court may consider the matter afresh: Re Lakhwinder Singh [2018] HKCA 246; Re Daljit Singh [2018] HKCA 328; Re Mudannayakalage Chaminda Pushpa Kumara [2018] HKCA 400; and Nupur Mst v Director of Immigration [2018] HKCA 524.

14.  In the Applicant’s case, the fact is that it has been established by both the Director and the Board in their respective decisions that the risk of harm in her claim if real is a localized one and that it is not unreasonable or unsafe for her to relocate to other part of Indonesia, there is simply no justification to afford her with non-refoulement protection in Hong Kong: see TK v Jenkins & Anor [2013] 1 HKC 526.

15.  In the premises, and having considered the decisions of both the Director and the Board with rigorous examination and anxious scrutiny, I do not find any error of law or procedural unfairness in either of them, nor any failure on their part to apply high standards of fairness in their consideration and assessment of the Applicant’s claim.

16.  For these reasons I am not satisfied that there is any prospect of success in the Applicant’s intended application for judicial review, I therefore refuse to grant leave and accordingly dismiss her application.

Where leave to apply has been granted, Applicants and their legal advisers are reminded of their obligation to reconsider the merits of their application in the light of the Respondent’s evidence

Form CALL-1