SUNENTI v. TORTURE CLAIMS APPEAL BOARD

HCAL 332/2019

[2023] HKCFI 1629

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO. 332 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 refused.

Observations for the Applicant:

1.  The Applicant is a 40-year-old national of Indonesia arrived in Hong Kong on 26 April 2013 with permission to work as a foreign domestic helper until the expiration of her employment contract on 26 April 2016 as extended or within 14 days of its early termination, but it was terminated on 21 April 2015 when the Applicant was arrested by police for theft, and for which she was subsequently convicted and sentenced to prison for 4 weeks, and upon her discharge from prison and was referred to the Immigration Department for deportation, she raised a non-refoulement claim on the basis that if she returned to Indonesia she would be harmed or killed by her husband’s creditor over his unpaid debts. She was subsequently released on recognizance pending the determination of her claim.

2.  The Applicant was born and raised in Kec Tukdana, Kab Indramayu, West Java, Indonesia. After leaving school she married her first husband but it soon ended in a divorce, and to make her own living the Applicant in 2001 went to work as a domestic helper in Singapore.

3.  In 2005 she returned to her home in Indonesia where she subsequently met her present husband whom she married in 2011 and raised a family with 2 children in her home district.

4.  Soon she discovered that her husband had borrowed money from a local money-lender, and when he was unable to keep up with his loan repayments, he would stay away from home to avoid his creditor, and when those men sent by his creditor were unable to find him at home, they started to threaten and harass the Applicant, and after one occasion when she was beaten by those men, in order to avoid them and to make her own living to support her children after her husband had disappeared, the Applicant in 2013 came to Hong Kong to work as a foreign domestic helper, but after she was arrested for theft in April 2015 that her employment was terminated, and for which she was convicted and sentenced to prison for 4 weeks.

5.  Upon her discharge from prison and was referred to the Immigration Department for deportation, and as she was afraid to return to her home country to face the threats from her husband’s creditor, she therefore raised her non-refoulement claim for protection, for which she completed a Non-refoulement Claim Form (“NCF”) on 4 January 2018 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation from the Duty Lawyer Service (“DLS”).

6.  By a Notice of Decision dated 29 January 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”).

7.  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 husband’s creditor and followers 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 them to seriously harm or kill her other than to put pressure on her to disclose her husband’s whereabouts or to get her to repay his 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 of more than 1.9 million square kilometers 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 her husband’s creditor to locate her.

8.  On 8 February 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 30 October 2018 before the Board during which she gave evidence and answered questions raised of her claim by the Adjudicator for the Board. On 17 January 2019 her appeal was dismissed by the Board which also confirmed the Director’s decision.

9.  In its decision the Board found inconsistencies and discrepancies in the Applicant’s evidence that it doubted her claim of fear of harm from her husband’s creditor that caused her to overstay in Hong Kong, and that in any event even if her claimed risk were real that it arose from a private monetary dispute between her husband and his creditor without any official involvement that state or police protection and internal relocation would be available to the Applicant upon her return to Indonesia to negate such risk that it concluded that her claim for non-refoulement protection failed on all applicable grounds.

10.  On 4 February 2019 the Applicant filed her Form 86 for leave to apply for judicial review of the Board’s decision, and put forward the following grounds for her intended challenge:

(1)  Misdirection in the Law in that the Adjudicator misdirected herself on the law by taking 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 Indonesia;

(5)  Irrationality in the Adjudicator’s failure to analyze and assess whether state protection exists in Indonesia and misdirected himself 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;

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

11.  These are however all just some vague and bare assertions of the Applicant containing a few key words or phrases but without any 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 did the Board misdirect itself on the test of torture when on the factual basis of the Applicant’s case that she had never been tortured and that in rejecting her claim based essentially on her credibility that it was simply unnecessary and irrelevant for the Applicant to raise any issue over any test on torture in her case, or how did the Board 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 her case, or in what way was her legal representation from her 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 her intended challenge of the Board’s decision.

12.  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.

13.  The only other complaint which the Applicant appeared to have made with any elaboration was about the hearing bundle being provided to her only a few days before her 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 her insufficient time to prepare for her appeal.

14.  Even if it is true that the hearing bundle indeed came to her 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 her NCF, records of her screening interviews and the Director’s decisions should be well familiar to the Applicant as they had earlier all been made available to her when she still had legal representation, whilst her NCF was completed on her own instructions with legal assistance, and that at her oral hearing she never raised any issue or requested the Adjudicator for further time to enable her to better prepare for her appeal. As such I do not find anything amiss arising from the hearing bundle for the Applicant in her appeal before the Board, nor do I find this ground reasonably arguable for her intended challenge either.

15.  In the Applicant’s case, the Board rejected her claim essentially on its adverse finding on her credibility for the thorough and detailed analysis and reasoning set out in paragraphs 27 – 51 of its decision with the benefit of hearing her in her oral evidence and her answers to questions raised of her claim, and in the absence of any error of law or procedural unfairness in her 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.

16.  Furthermore, the fact is that it has also been established by both the Director and the Board in their respective decision that the risk of harm in the Applicant’s 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.

17.  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.

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