SARI EVA RENI PUSPITA v. TORTURE CLAIMS APPEAL BOARD

HCAL 1527/2020

[2025] HKCFI 3923

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO. 1527 OF 2020

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 / the Applicant being absent in open court;

Leave to apply for judicial review be refused.

Observations for the Applicant:

1.  The Applicant is a 32-year-old national of Indonesia who last arrived in Hong Kong on 29 January 2019 with permission to continue to work as a foreign domestic helper until the expiration of her employment contract or within 14 days of its early termination, but when her last employment was prematurely terminated on 29 September 2019 she did not depart and instead overstayed, and on 18 December 2019 she surrendered to the Immigration Department and raised a non-refoulement claim for protection on the basis that if she returned to Indonesia she would be harmed or killed by her husband for leaving him and refusing to resume their marital relationship. She was subsequently released on recognizance pending the determination of her claim.

2.  The Applicant was born and raised in Batokan Ngantru, Tulungagung, Jawa Timur, Indonesia. After leaving school she worked as a laundry lady, married her husband and raised a family with 2 children in her home district.

3.  Their marriage however did not fare well as the Applicant was not happy about her husband hanging out with the local gangsters and having affairs with other women, which had led to frequent quarrels between them during which her husband would beat and abuse her.

4.  In 2012 the Applicant was unable to tolerate her husband’s abuses and fled from their home for Jakarta to take shelter in a relative’s home, but soon her husband arrived to beat her and drag her back to their home.

5.  As her husband’s abuses and beatings persisted, the Applicant in 2016 left their home to return to her parents’ place and made a report of the abuses to the local police, yet her husband soon came again to beat her for going to the police, and threatened to kill her if she dared to leave him again.

6.  To avoid her husband’s threats, the Applicant then fled to Jombang to take shelter in her aunt’s place, and made arrangements to leave the country by applying to work as a foreign domestic helper in Hong Kong, which she eventually did on 15 April 2017 when she arrived in Hong Kong to start her first employment, but when her last employment was terminated on 29 September 2019, she was afraid to return to Indonesia and so she overstayed in Hong Kong and subsequently raised her non-refoulement claim for protection, for which she completed a Non-refoulement Claim Form (“NCF”) on 11 March 2020 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation from the Duty Lawyer Service (“DLS”).

7.  By a Notice of Decision dated 6 April 2020 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 found no substantial grounds for believing that there will be any real risk of her being harmed or killed by her husband upon her return to Indonesia due to the low intensity and frequency of past ill-treatment from him, that there is no evidence of any real intention of her husband to seriously harm or kill her other than to press her to return to him, that in any event it was a private domestic dispute between the 2 of them only 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 267 million people spread across a vast territory of more than 1.8 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 to locate her.

9.  On 17 April 2020 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 15 June 2020 before the Board during which she gave evidence and answered questions raised of her claim by the Adjudicator for the Board. On 29 June 2020 her appeal was dismissed by the Board which also confirmed the Director’s decision.

10.  In its decision[1] the Board accepted the Applicant’s claim of being abused and threatened by her husband due to their domestic disputes but found no reliable evidence of any real intention of her husband to seriously harm or kill her other than to press her to return to him to resume their marital relationship, and that in any event it was a private domestic dispute between her and her husband only 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 her husband that her claim for non-refoulement protection failed on all applicable grounds.

11.  On 22 July 2020 the Applicant filed her Form 86 for leave to apply for judicial review of the Board’s decision, but no ground for seeking relief was given in her Form or her supporting affirmation of the same date, nor did she request any oral hearing for her application. As such, and in the absence of any error of law or irrationality 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 for his 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.  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.

14.  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.

15.  For all 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