SAJIB MOHAMMAD v. TORTURE CLAIMS APPEAL BOARD

HCAL 1609/2019

[2024] HKCFI 1659

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO 1609 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 28-year-old national of Bangladesh who entered Hong Kong illegally on 3 February 2016 and was arrested by police on the same day. After he was referred to the Immigration Department for investigation, he raised a non-refoulement claim for protection on the basis that if he returned to Bangladesh he would be harmed or killed by certain local supporters of the political party Awami League (“AL”) as he supported their rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (“BNP”). He was subsequently released on recognizance pending the determination of his claim.

2.  The Applicant was born and raised in Mirpur, Dhaka, Bangladesh. After leaving school he remained residing with his parents, and supported BNP regularly attended their local meetings and activities without holding any official post in the party.

3.  In 2006 after AL won the general election and became the ruling party, their local supporters started to intimidate and harass supporters of rival parties in particularly BNP which often led to violent conflicts.

4.  One day in 2010 the Applicant received a threatening phone call from a local AL supporter who demanded him to leave BNP to join his party, and when he refused, the AL supporter then made death threats against him.

5.  As a result the Applicant became concerned for his safety and fled to Nitira to take shelter in his grandmother’s home for several months before returning to his home village where he hid in a friend’s place.

6.  However, one day in 2015 some local AL supporters came to his friend’s place looking for him, and when they found him inside the house, they dragged him out and beat him with wooden sticks, and before they left they threatened him that next time they would kill him if he still refused to join their party.

7.  After the last assault the Applicant felt that it was no longer safe to remain in Bangladesh, and so on 26 January 2016 he departed for China, and from there he later sneaked into Hong Kong, and upon his arrest by the police he then raised his non-refoulement claim for protection, for which he completed a Non-refoulement Claim Form (“NCF”) on 24 November 2017 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation from the Duty Lawyer Service (“DLS”).

8.  By a Notice of Decision dated 7 December 2017 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 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”).

9.  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 there will be any real and substantial risk of him being harmed or killed by those local AL supporters upon his return to Bangladesh 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 him or any political reason for them to specifically target him given the fact that he was just an ordinary BNP supporter without holding any official post in the 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 Bangladesh with a large population of 157 million people spread across a vast territory of more than 148,000 square kilometers that it would not be unduly harsh for the Applicant as an able-bodied young adult to move to other areas of the country away from his home district in large cities such as Chittagong or Khulna where it would be difficult if not impossible for anyone to locate him.

10.  The Applicant then lodged an appeal to the Torture Claims Appeal Board (“Board”) against the Director’s decision, and for which he attended an oral hearing on 27 February 2019 before the Board during which he gave evidence and answered questions raised of his claim by the Adjudicator for the Board. On 5 June 2019 his appeal was dismissed by the Board which also confirmed the Director’s decision.

11.  In its decision the Board accepted the Applicant’s evidence of being a victim of electoral violence from some local AL supporters in his home country but found no evidence of any real intention of those AL supporters to seriously harm or kill him or any political reason for them to specifically target him for harm given that he was just an ordinary BNP supporter without holding any official post in the party, and that in any event in the absence of any evidence of any official involvement that state or police protection would be available to the Applicant upon his return to Bangladesh as well as reasonable internal relocation alternatives for him to move safely to other parts of the country away from his home district without any risk of being located that his claim for non-refoulement protection failed on all applicable grounds.

12.  On 13 June 2019 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, of which he confirmed at the hearing as follows:

(1)  That the Board was in breach of procedural unfairness in that it had unlawfully fettered its discretion by refusing the Applicant’s appeal on the grounds that they did not satisfy the requirement;

(2)  That the Adjudicator acted in a procedurally unfair manner in dealing with the Applicant’s appeal;

(3)  That the Board’s decision to refuse the Applicant’s appeal was unreasonable or irrational in the public law sense or the result of procedural errors or unfairness;

(4)  That the Board failed to meet the greater care and duty owed to a self-represented claimant;

(5)  That the Applicant was not given the opportunity to put forward his submissions at his oral hearing before the Board nor was he invited to submit written submissions or reply to the Director’s submissions at his appeal hearing; and

(6)  That the Board had significantly relied on source of news not officially recognized or were simply hearsays or outdated with the lack of credible source of information that resulted in groundless speculations that it would be safe for the Applicant to return to his home country.

13.  These are however all just some bare and vague 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 his case or how the Board or the Adjudicator had erred in the decision, or in what way did the Board unlawfully fetter its discretion or act in a procedurally unfair manner or that the decision was unreasonable or irrational, or what source of news or COI relied on by the Board were not officially recognized or were hearsays or outdated, or how was the Applicant not given the opportunity to present his case or to make his submissions during his appeal hearing before the Board when he was clearly able to do so without any problem and with the assistance of an interpreter. 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 his intended challenge.

14.  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.

15.  In the Applicant’s case, the fact is that it has been correctly established by both the Director and the Board in their respective decisions that the risk of harm in his claim if real is a localized one and that it is not unreasonable or unsafe for him to relocate to other part of Bangladesh, 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, I therefore refuse to grant leave and accordingly dismiss his 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