Nguyen Thi Viet Ha v. Torture Claims Appeal Board

HCAL 2618/2024

[2025] HKCFI 908

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO 2618 OF 2024

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;

Order by Deputy High Court Judge Bruno Chan:

Leave to apply for judicial review be refused.

Observations for the Applicant:

1.The Applicant is a 51-year-old national of Vietnam who entered Hong Kong illegally on 8 February 2024 and was arrested by police on 14 February 2024. After she was referred to the Immigration Department for investigation, she raised a non-refoulement claim for protection on the basis that if she returned to Vietnam she would be harmed or killed by her creditor over her unpaid debts.

2.The Applicant was born and raised in Thanh Chuong District, Nghe An Province, Vietnam. After leaving school she worked as a farmer, married her husband and raised a family with a son in her husband’s home district in Hanoi where they ran a farming business.

3.In early 2020 their son had a traffic accident and was hospitalized, and in order to meet his medical expenses the Applicant borrowed a loan from a local money-lender to be repaid by monthly instalments from the income of their farming business.

4.However, shortly thereafter her husband also met a traffic accident and eventually passed away, and as a result the Applicant was unable to run her farming business by herself while having to look after her injured son at the same time, and after she lost her business and started to default with her loan repayment, her creditor sent men to threaten her that in August 2020 she fled from her home to hide in her parents’ place.

5.In late 2023 when she heard that her creditor had sent men to look for her in her parents’ place, the Applicant felt it was no longer safe to remain in Vietnam, and so on 5 February 2024 she departed for China, and from there she later sneaked into Hong Kong, and upon her arrest by the police she then raised her non-refoulement claim for protection, for which she completed a Non-refoulement Claim Form (“NCF”) on 3 April 2024 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation from the Duty Lawyer Service (“DLS”).

6.By a Notice of Decision dated 7 June 2024 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 creditor and followers upon her return to Vietnam 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 press her to repay her debts, that in any event it was a private monetary dispute between her and her creditor 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 Vietnam with a large population of 100 million people spread across a vast territory of more than 331,000 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 where it would be difficult if not impossible for her creditor to locate her.

8.The Applicant then lodged an appeal to the Torture Claims Appeal Board (“Board”) against the Director’s decision, and for which she attended an oral hearing on 26 September 2024 before the Board during which she gave evidence and answered questions raised of her claim by the Adjudicator for the Board. On 8 October 2024 her appeal was dismissed by the Board which also confirmed the Director’s decision.

9.In its decision the Board found material inconsistencies and discrepancies in the Applicant’s evidence that it doubted the credibility of her claim of fear of harm from her creditor that caused her to leave her country to come to Hong Kong to seek protection, that even if her claimed fear of harm from her creditor were real that there was no reliable evidence of any real intention of her creditor to seriously harm or kill her other than to press her to repay her debts, and that in any event it was a private monetary dispute between her and her creditor only without any official involvement that state or police protection would be available to the Applicant upon her return to Vietnam 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 creditor that her claim for non-refoulement protection failed on all applicable grounds.

10.On 24 December 2024 the Applicant filed her Form 86 for leave to apply for judicial review of the Board’s decision, and put forward various grounds for her intended challenge, of which she confirmed at the hearing as below:

(1)  That the Board reached the decision wrongly in assessing her non-refoulement claim as the decision was not fair or reasonable as required by the Wednesbury test in failing to recognize that her life must be protected by the criminal law from extra-judicial killings that she may face if deported back to her home country;

(2)  That the Board failed to appreciate or place proper or sufficient weight or importance to the presence of State Acquiescence in her case which led to an unfair outcome of rejecting her claim;

(3)  That the Adjudicator acted unreasonable and was procedurally unfair by placing too much reliance on COI but failed to take into account the Applicant’s personal background and experience in assessing her claim;

(4)  That the Board had listed relevant COI which supported the Applicant’s aversions that the police in her country would not be able to protect but failed to consider or give sufficient weight to such evidence and instead ruled otherwise against the Applicant’s case which was a clear case of unfair attitude shown by the Board which in itself is enough to render its decision void;

(5)  That the Adjudicator was procedurally improper and unfair when assessing whether or not to accept the Applicant’s explanations and unreasonably required her to respond to questions that he was not in a position to offer any response;

(6)  That the Adjudicator made a ruling to dismiss the Applicant’s appeal based on findings which the Adjudicator ought to allow and thus the decision was irrational.

11.These are however all just 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 her case or how the Board or the Adjudicator had erred in the decision, or in what way was the decision unfair or unreasonable or that the Adjudicator had acted procedurally unfair or irrational, or how did the Adjudicator fail to take into account of relevant COI or being selective or improperly rely on irrelevant COI, or what relevancy were state acquiescence or extra-judicial killings to the Applicant’s case when on the factual basis of even her own case that it was just a private monetary dispute between her and her creditor only without any official involvement or political element at all. 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 her intended challenge.

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 Vietnam, 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 leave application.

Dated the 20^th day of March 2025

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