RE SOHAIL ASIF

CACV 219/2021

[2021] HKCA 1738

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL APPEAL NO 219 OF 2021

(ON APPEAL FROM HCAL NO 282 OF 2020)

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J U D G M E N T

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Hon Coleman J (giving the Judgment of the Court):

1.  On 12 October 2021, the applicant filed a Notice of Motion to apply for leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal (“the CFA”)  against this Court’s (G Lam JA and Coleman J)  judgment of 7 October 2021 (“the Judgment”)  [2021] HKCA 1447. In the Judgment, we dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the decision of Deputy High Court Judge KW Lung dated 29 January 2020, refusing the applicant leave to apply for judicial review.

2.  The facts and issues in the appeal, as well as the Court’s reasons for dismissing it, are set out in the Judgment.  We will not repeat them here.  After reviewing the Notice of Motion and the applicant’s written submissions lodged on 26 October 2021, we see no reason to deviate from the usual practice to consider this application on paper pursuant to paragraph 3 of Practice Direction 2.1.

3.  In his Notice of Motion, the applicant set out the following grounds:

“I would like to infomr the Honourable Court that there is some error in law in my decision. Decision maker just relied on COL Information and my previous facts which were in favour while rejecting my claim. Actual life occur different situation than what is mentioned in COL information. The Officer and courts prefers to ignore the overwheming of the evidence of this violence towards minorities searching for unrealistic silver lining. The Decision is betray a bias and formula approach unlikely fairly access the danger of my life and clearly not reasonable”. [sic]

4.  The applicant complied with the direction to file written submissions.  However, a large portion of the written submissions is devoted to general statements of law quoted from case law, international human rights treaties, the Basic Law and the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance, Cap 383, without indicating how they relate to or could be applied to the present case.  There are also submissions on delay, the relevance of which is unclear.

5.  The last part of the written submissions consists of the section headed “1^st Ground” and a section headed “2^nd Ground”.  These sections are identical to the skeleton submissions filed by the applicant on 25 August 2021 for the appeal hearing which resulted in the Judgment.

6.  This application does not reveal any viable ground of appeal.  The applicant did not identify any errors in the Judgment. The “grounds” contained in the Notice of Motion and the written submissions are simply the regurgitation of general statements of law, without reference to the Judgment.

7.  Having considered the materials available, we fail to see any questions of great general or public importance which ought to be submitted to the CFA, as required by section 22(1)(b)  of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Ordinance (Cap 484).  Nor do we see any other reason why the applicant should, for some other reasons, be allowed to appeal to the CFA.

8.  The Notice of Motion is therefore dismissed.