Case Document

100%Judiciary

HCAL 601/2019

[2022] HKCFI 980

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO 601 OF 2019

BETWEEN

	Hafiz Ali Raza	Applicant
	and
	Torture Claims Appeal Board / Non-refoulement Claims Petition Office	Putative Respondent
	and
	Director of Immigration	Putative Interested Party

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 the Applicant being present/absent in open court;

Order by The Honourable Mrs Justice Campbell‑Moffat:

Leave to apply for judicial review be refused

Observations for the Applicant:

Procedural history

1.The applicant entered Hong Kong illegally from Shenzhen on 10 April 2015 and was arrested by the police on 17 July 2015. He submitted a non-refoulement (“NRF”) claim by way of written representation on 19 July 2015. His NRF claim form was submitted on 15 March 2018 and dealt with under the USM[1].

2.The applicant attended a screening interview on 16 April 2018. The Director of Immigration (“the Director”) dismissed his claim on all grounds (including that under BOR 2) by Notice of Decision (“the Decision”) on 27 April 2018. He appealed the Decision to the Torture Claims Appeal Board (“the TCAB”). The adjudicator of the TCAB, Mr Wong Chun-man (“the Adjudicator”), heard his appeal on 21 September 2018. The Adjudicator considered his appeal on all applicable grounds including BOR 2 and refused his appeal on

22 February 2019.

3.The applicant filed a notice of application on a Form 86 seeking leave to apply for judicial review on 4 March 2019 and did not request an oral hearing. The matter was therefore considered on the papers.

Background

4.The applicant is a Pakistani national. He was born and raised in the Punjab. He is Muslim (of the Deobandi sect), single and with 14 years of formal education. His complaint is against various unnamed and unknown people who are part of the Shia sect. At the time of the single incident in question, the applicant was studying at a Madrasa. On 8 August 2014, he and his friends were involved in a fight over religion. He maintains that he suffered a head wound in this fight which required him to be an in-patient in hospital for some two and a half months during which time he says that his father was also attacked after he had visited his son in hospital. He has not identified his father’s assailants nor whether he suffered any injury as a result.

5.The applicant reported the original fight to the local police and made a formal FIR[2] but no action was taken. The applicant then went to Lahore to avoid further incident. During this time, he says his father reported that someone wanted to kill him although the applicant did not know whom. It was his father who arranged for him to leave the country. He left Pakistan on 7 April 2015 and travelled to China from whence he came into Hong Kong illegally despite being in possession of a valid Pakistani passport.

The non-refoulement claim

6.Under the Unified Screening Mechanism (“USM”), the applicant’s claim is to be assessed on all applicable grounds which are:

i. Risk of torture under Part VIIC of the Immigration Ordinance, Cap 115 (“torture risk”). Under torture risk, the applicant must establish he has substantial grounds for believing he will be subjected to torture if returned to his home state. Those grounds cannot be speculative or theoretical and the risk of torture must be real and personal. The standard of proof is a low one.

ii. Risk of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under Article 3 of section 8 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance (“HKBORO”), Cap 383 and Article 7 of the ICCPR (“BOR 3 risk”). Under BOR 3, the applicant must establish that he has a genuine and substantial risk of being subject to mental or physical torture; cruel, inhuman or degrading ill treatment; or punishment, if returned to his home state. The level of such mental or physical torture etc. must reach a minimum level of severity.

iii. 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”). Under “persecution risk”, the applicant must establish that he has a well-founded fear that there is a real chance that he will face persecution based upon race, religion, nationality or membership of a social group or political opinion if he is expelled and returned to his home state.

iv. Risk of a violation of the right to life under Article 2 of section 8 of the HKBORO, Cap 383 and Article 6 of the ICCPR (“BOR 2 risk”). Under BOR 2, the applicant must establish a real risk that he will be arbitrarily deprived of his life, have a death penalty imposed upon him; or be the victim of genocide or otherwise be deprived of his rights under BOR 2.

7.It is the duty of both the Director and the Adjudicator to weigh all of the available credible, reliable evidence and ascertain whether the applicant had established the factual basis of his claim. The Director and the Adjudicator must then assess the level of harm the applicant says he fears. Each ground of claim above has a relevant level of risk. It is for the applicant to establish that he is the subject of such risk. Under the HKBORO, he must show substantial grounds for believing that the harm which he fears is “foreseeable, real, personal and present”. The question is whether there is a real risk or real chance of the occurrence or recurrence of the harm which he fears.

Decision and further decision of the Director

8.The applicant seeks to review the Decisions of both the Director and the Adjudicator. As the applicant has already utilised the channel of appealing the Director’s decision to the TCAB and the TCAB treated the appeal as a rehearing, the Decision of the Director is not susceptible to judicial review once an appeal to the Board has been pursued by the claimant and dealt with[3].

Decision of the Adjudicator

9.The Adjudicator analysed the applicant’s claim on all applicable grounds. He arranged for an oral hearing and treated the appeal as a rehearing. He noted a number of inconsistencies within the applicant’s case and found the applicant’s case to be “implausible and unreliable[4]”. He correctly set out the law and key legal principles including the burden and standard of proof.

Leave to apply for judicial review

10.Judicial review is not a rehearing of the merits of the applicant’s original application for refugee status. The primary decision makers in a claim for non-refoulement are the Director and the Adjudicator of the TCAB. They alone assess the evidence and make findings of fact upon matters raised by the applicant and which allegedly give rise to his non-refoulement claim, such as on risk of harm, availability of state protection and viability of internal re-location. The role of this court in judicial review is not to re-assess the non-refoulement claim. This court will review the decision of the Adjudicator and only intervene by way of judicial review where it finds errors of law, procedural unfairness or irrationality. This being an application to apply for leave to judicially review the Decision of the Adjudicator,it is for the applicant to show an arguable case that there was either unlawfulness, unreasonableness or unfairness by the Adjudicator when dealing with his application in order to obtain leave to judicially review him/her.

Grounds of review

11.There were no grounds of review. The applicant seeks a re-hearing of his appeal. He has not complained of any procedural irregularity, unfairness or unreasonableness. The applicant has a duty to state the grounds of his intended judicial review and show that they are reasonably arguable and enjoy a realistic prospect of success: Peter Po Fun Chan v Winnie Cheung & Anor (2007) 10 HKCFAR 676. I have nevertheless considered whether the papers indicate any such ground for the purposes of considering whether to grant leave. They do not.

Conclusion

12.Despite the fact that the applicant did not submit any grounds of review, due to the seriousness of the issues at hand, I have considered the papers carefully. I have not found any error of law or procedure. I see no evidence of procedural unfairness nor a failure to adhere to a high standard of fairness throughout. Despite the onus being upon the applicant, the Adjudicator engaged in a joint endeavour with the applicant and considered all relevant criteria; gave the applicant a reasonable opportunity to state his case and enquired into that case appropriately. There is no criticism of his determination, which was open to him on the facts and eminently reasonable[5]. This case was lacking in any merit whatsoever.

13.In my judgement, there is no reasonably arguable basis upon which the applicant could found a claim for judicial review and, as such, there would be no realistic prospect of success if he were to be granted leave. I therefore refuse leave for judicial review.

Dated the 7th day of April 2022.

	(Trista Wong)
	for Registrar, High Court

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

Notes for the Applicant: If leave has been granted, the Applicant or the Applicant’s solicitors must:
a) serve on the respondent and such interested parties as may be directed by the Court the order granting leave and any directions given within 14 days after the leave was granted (Order 53, rule 4A); b) issue the originating summons within 14 days after the grant of leave and serve it in accordance with Order 53, rule 5; and c) supply to every other party copies of every affidavit which the Applicant proposes to use at the hearing, including the affidavit in support of the application for leave (Order 53, rule 6(5)).		Sent to the Applicant on 07/04/2022 Hafiz Ali Raza Applicant’s ref. no: Nil.		Sent to the Putative Respondent / the Putative Respondent’s solicitors / such Putative Interested Parties as may be directed by the Court / the Putative Interested Parties’ solicitors on 07/04/2022 Torture Claims Appeal Board/Non-refoulement Claims Petition Office Putative Respondent’s ref. no.: USM 11558/18/5/143/P2243 Director of Immigration Putative Interested Party’s ref. no.: QA T/C 1034/18 (formerly RBCZ/12514/15) Department of Justice, Senior Assistant Law Office (Civil Law) (Civil Litigation Unit 2)