Muyingo Jackline v. Torture Claims Appeal Board / Non-refoulement Claims Petition Office

CACV 189/2020

[2021] HKCA 517

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL APPEAL NO 189 OF 2020

(ON APPEAL FROM HCAL NO 1363 OF 2018)

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BETWEEN

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J U D G M E N T

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Hon S T Poon J (giving the Judgment of the Court):

1.On 24 November 2020, the applicant filed a Notice of Motion to apply for leave to appeal to the Court of Final Appeal against this Court’s judgment of 10 November 2020 (“the Judgment”). In the Judgment, this Court (Au JA and S T Poon J) dismissed the applicant’s appeal against the decision of Deputy High Court Judge Bruno Chan dated 9 June 2020 dismissing her application for 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, pursuant to paragraph 3 of Practice Direction 2.1, we see no reason to deviate from the usual practice and proceed to consider this application without an oral hearing.

3.Section 22(1)(b) of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Ordinance, Cap 484 provides that an appeal shall lie to the Court of Final Appeal (“CFA”) at the discretion of this Court or the CFA if the question involved in the appeal is one which, by reason of its great general or public importance, or otherwise, ought to be submitted to the CFA for decision.

4.In his Notice of Motion, the applicant raised the following grounds of appeal:

“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. Acual life occur different situation then what is mentioned in COL Information. The Officer and cours prefers to ignore the overwhelming of the evidence of this violence towards minorities searching for unrealistic silver lining. The Decision is betrary a bias and formula approach unlikely fairly access the danger of my life and clearly not reasonable.” [sic]

5.In her skeleton submissions of 4 December 2020 filed pursuant to the Court’s directions,  the applicant quoted passages from ST v Director of Immigration[1] [2014] 4 HKLRD 277 and Secretary for Security v Sakthevel Prabakar [2005] 1 HKLRD 289, and other decisions on Wednesbury unreasonableness.  She further submitted that "high standards of fairness" applied to the determination of a non- refoulement claim and that the Board had acted in a procedurally unfair manner without properly assessing the applicant's credibility.  Lastly, she referred to section 37ZT of the Immigration Ordinance (Cap 115) which is about the late filing of notice of appeal to the Board.  However, she did not explain and elaborate on how the aforesaid cases and statutory provision were related to or would assist her case.

6.In our view, the applicant’s application is hopelessly without merit.  The matters raised in the Notice of Motion and written submissions are those advanced but rejected by us at [22]-[23] of the Judgment and she failed to pinpoint any specific error in our reasons.

7.In the circumstances, we do not consider that there is any question of great general or public importance or which otherwise ought to be submitted to the CFA for determination.  The statutory requirements under section 22 are plainly not met.

8.For these reasons, we refuse to grant leave to appeal to the CFA, and dismiss the applicant’s Notice of Motion.

The applicant, unrepresented, acted in person