ZUBAIR MUHAMMAD v. TORTURE CLAIMS APPEAL BOARD

HCAL 2054/2018

[2020] HKCFI 2378

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST No. 2054 of 2018

Application for Leave to Apply for Judicial Review

NOTIFICATION of the Judge’s decision (Ord. 53 r. 3)

Following:

Leave to apply for judicial review refused.

Observations for the Applicant:

1.  The Applicant is a 35-year-old national of Pakistan who entered Hong Kong illegally on 26 August 2014 and was arrested by police on 1 September 2014. After he was referred to the Immigration Department for investigation, he raised a non-refoulement claim on the basis that if he returned to Pakistan he would be harmed or killed by the local supporters of rival political party Pakistan Muslim League (N) (“PML(N)”).  He was subsequently released on recognizance pending the determination of his claim.

2.  The Applicant was born and raised in Village Malla Kalan, Tehsil Hazro, District Attock, Pakistan.  After leaving school he remained living with his parents in their home village, and became a supporter of the political party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (“PTI”) regularly attended their local activities.

3.  One day in September 2013, after having attended a PTI meeting in his home village, the Applicant together with some fellow supporters were approached by a group of PML(N) supporters who demanded that they should quit their party to join PML(N), and when they refused, an argument ensued followed by a mass brawl between the two groups until some other villagers intervened, and before those PML(N) supporters left, they threatened the Applicant and his friends that next time they would kill them.

4.  As the Applicant continued to receive similar threats from those PML(N) supporters in his home village, he therefore left for Rawalpindi, and from there he went to Karachi, but as he still feared for his life, he therefore departed Pakistan on 10 October 2013 for China, and from there he later sneaked into Hong Kong and raised his non-refoulement claim for protection, for which he completed a Non-refoulement Claim Form (“NCF”) on 18 April 2016 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation from the Duty Lawyer Service.          

5.  By a Notice of Decision dated 11 January 2017 the Director of Immigration (“the 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 his 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”).

6.  In his decision the Director took into account of all the relevant circumstances of the Applicant’s claim and found no substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being harmed by those local PML(N) supporters upon his return to Pakistan due to the low intensity and frequency of past ill-treatment from them, that violent conflicts between supporters of rival political parties were common then in Pakistan and that there is no evidence that the Applicant had been specifically targeted given he was merely a supporter with no official position in his party, that in any event in the absence of 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 Pakistan with a large population of 199 million people spread across a vast territory of more than 796,000 square kilometers that it would not be unduly harsh for the Applicant as an able-bodied adult to move to other part of Pakistan away from his home district in large cities such as Karachi or Islamabad where it would be difficult if not impossible for those local PML(N) supporters to locate him.

7.  On 20 January 2017 the Applicant lodged an appeal to the Torture Claims Appeal Board (“the Board”) against the Director’s decision, and for which he attended an oral hearing on 22 June 2018 before the Board during which he gave evidence and answered questions put to him by the adjudicator for the Board.  On 13 September 2018 his appeal was dismissed by the Board which also confirmed the decision of the Director.

8.  In its decision the Board found the Applicant’s evidence on his alleged political involvements and conflicts with supporters of rival party vague, unpersuasive and totally devoid of details that it doubted his claimed fear of harm in Pakistan, that his credibility was further undermined by his failure to raise his claim upon his arrival in Hong Kong until after his arrest by the police, and that it did not accept that he was of any adverse interest to PML(N) or any political parties at the time when he departed Pakistan or that he would face any such risk upon his return to Pakistan that his claim for non-refoulement protection failed on all applicable grounds.   

9.  On 27 September 2018 the Applicant filed his Form 86 for leave to apply for judicial review of the Board’s decision, and put forward the following grounds for his intended challenge:

(1) misdirection in law in that the adjudicator took into account that the Applicant had to have experienced torture in the past in order to establish substantial grounds to believe that there was a risk of torture in the future;

(2) procedural impropriety/unfairness in the adjudicator’s failure to carry out sufficient research and inquiry into COI and for failing to have regard to relevant and up-to-date COI in the consideration of his claim;

(3) irrationality in the adjudicator’s failure to take into account or putting proper weight on relevant COI and for cherry-picking and putting weight on irrelevant COI in the consideration of his claim;

(4) irrationality in the adjudicator’s failure to evaluate and make finding of fact as to whether a consistent pattern of gross and mass violation of human rights in Pakistan;

(5) irrationality in the adjudicator’s failure to analyze and assess whether state protection exists in Pakistan and misdirected herself as to the extended meaning of state protection;

(6) irrationality in the Board’s decision in taking into account and putting weight in irrelevant consideration or based on incorrect or inaccurate facts;

(7) procedural impropriety for failure to call for psychological and psychiatric evaluations and reports on the Applicant;

(8) procedural impropriety/unfairness in the adjudicator applying the incorrect standard of proof in her decision; and

(9) procedural impropriety/unfairness due to lack of or insufficient representation from the assigned duty lawyer for the Applicant resulting in unfair procedure.  

10.  All these however appear to me standard pro forma grounds commonly used in this type of application but not relevant to the Applicant’s case, or are just broad and vague assertions of the Applicant containing several pages of key words and phrases but without any particulars or specifics or elaborations as to how they applied to his case or how the Board or the adjudicator had erred in the decision, or in what way did the adjudicator fail to take into account of relevant COI or being selective or improperly rely on irrelevant COI, or why it was necessary or relevant to call for psychological or psychiatric evaluations in his case, or in what way was his legal representation from his assigned lawyer insufficient.  None of these assertions were elaborated or presented with any particulars or specifics by the Applicant, and as such I do not find any of them reasonably arguable for his intended challenge.

11.  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.

12.  The only other complaint which the Applicant appeared to have made with any elaboration was about the hearing bundle being provided to him only a few days before his appeal hearing before the Board which consisted of the Director’s skeleton submission and other documents all of which were in English and thereby given him insufficient time to prepare for his appeal.

13.  Even if it is true that the hearing bundle indeed came to him late as alleged, and the Applicant never provided any proof such as the date of the covering letter that accompanied the hearing bundle, I note that most of the documents including his NCF, records of his screening interviews and the Director’s decisions should be well familiar to the Applicant as they had earlier all been made available to him when he still had legal representation, whilst his NCF was completed on his own instructions with legal assistance, and that at his oral hearing he never raised any issue or requested the adjudicator for further time to enable him to better prepare for his appeal.  Accordingly I do not find anything amiss arising from the hearing bundle for the Applicant in his appeal before the Board.

14.  Essentially the Board rejected his claim on its adverse finding on his credibility for the thorough and detailed analysis and reasoning set out in paragraphs 29 – 40 of its decision with the benefit of hearing him in his oral evidence and his answers to questions raised of his claim, and in the absence of any error of law or procedural unfairness in his process before the Board or in its decision being clearly and properly identified by the Applicant, I do not find any reasonably arguable basis to challenge the finding of the Board.

15.  Furthermore, the fact is that it has been established by the Director in his decision that the risk of harm in the Applicant’s claim is a localized one and that it is not unreasonable or unsafe for him to relocate to other part of Pakistan, a decision also confirmed by the Board, there is simply no justification to afford him with non-refoulement protection in Hong Kong: see TK v Jenkins & Anor [2013] 1 HKC 526.     

16.  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.

17.  For these reasons I am not satisfied that there is any prospect of success in the Applicant’s intended application for judicial review, and I accordingly refuse his leave 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