Case Document

100%Judiciary

HCAL 1599/2020 and
HCAL 894/2024
(Consolidated)

[2025] HKCFI 4320

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO. 1599 OF 2020

BETWEEN
	Masura Agnes Richard	Applicant
	and
	Torture Claims Appeal Board	Putative Respondent
	and
	Director of Immigration	Putative Interested Party

AND

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO. 894 OF 2024

BETWEEN
	Masura Agnes Richard	Applicant
	and
	Torture Claims Appeal Board	Putative Respondent
	and
	Director of Immigration	Putative Interested Party

(Consolidated pursuant to the Order of
Deputy High Court Judge Bruno Chan dated 23 September 2025)

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:

1. HCAL 894/2024 be consolidated with HCAL 1599/2020; and

2. Leave to apply for Judicial Review be refused.

Observations for the Applicant:

1.The Applicant is a 43-year-old national of Tanzania who last arrived in Hong Kong on 28 February 2018 as a visitor with permission to remain as such up to 29 May 2018 when she did not depart and instead overstayed, and on 31 May 2018 she surrendered to the Immigration Department and raised a non-refoulement claim for protection on the basis that if she returned to Tanzania she would be harmed or killed by her creditor and/or associates over her unpaid debts. She was subsequently released on recognizance pending the determination of her claim.

2.The Applicant was born and raised in Ngarenaro, Arusha, Tanzania. After leaving school she worked as a hairdresser in a saloon in Kinondoni, Dar es Salaam to make her living.

3.In 2001 or 2002, while working as a freelance model, she became acquainted with a businessman by the name of Tumba who offered to provide her with financial security to enable her to study in China as a fashion designer, and for which her elder brother acted as a guarantor for the loan and that her family’s farm was used as security for the financial arrangements which included annual provisions for her school fees and living expenses in China for her studies, and so the Applicant departed Tanzania in 2012 for Beijing to begin with her studies.

4.However, in 2017 she was informed by her brother that Tumba had died in some incident, and as a result there would no longer be any financial provisions for her, and that instead some of Tumba’s associates had started to demand for repayment of the money paid for her studies in China all the years, and when he was unable to do so, those men took him away by force for 2 weeks during which he was beaten and tortured, and was eventually released with a warning that next time they would kill him and the Applicant if the loan remained unpaid, and so her brother told her that he was going to leave town to go into hiding, and advised her not to return to Tanzania for the sake of her own safety.

5.As a result, the Applicant ceased her studies in Beijing, but as she was afraid to return to Tanzania, she therefore came to Hong Kong and Macau to stay with her friends, and on her last trip to Hong Kong in February 2018, she overstayed and subsequently raised her non-refoulement claim for protection, for which she completed a Non-refoulement Claim Form (“NCF”) on 17 January 2019 and attended screening interview before the Immigration Department with legal representation.

6.By a Notice of Decision dated 27 February 2019 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 the associates of her creditor Tumba upon her return to Tanzania as low due to the absence of or 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 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 Tanzania with a large population of 55 million people spread across a vast territory of more than 947,000 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 such as Dodoma or Mwanza Region where it would be difficult if not impossible for anyone to locate her.

8.On 8 March 2019 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 23 August 2019 before the Board during which she gave evidence and answered questions raised of her claim by the Adjudicator for the Board. On 7 July 2020, her appeal was dismissed by the Board which also confirmed the Director’s decision.

9.In its decision[1], the Board found material inconsistencies discrepancies and contradictions in the Applicant’s evidence that it doubted and rejected the credibility of her claim of fear of harm from any associates of any man known as Tumba over any monetary dispute that it caused her to overstay in Hong Kong to seek protection, and considered that she had fabricated her claimed account of events in Tanzania in order to create a basis for her application for protection from refoulement, and concluded that she had failed to establish her claimed fear of harm upon her return to Tanzania that her claim for non-refoulement protection failed on all applicable grounds.

10.On 3 August 2020 the Applicant filed her Form 86 under HCAL 1599/2020 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 in which she just repeated her claim as before but without putting forth any proper ground for her intended challenge.

11.However, before her application could be heard by the Court, the Applicant on 4 June 2024 filed another Form 86 under HCAL 894/2024 again for leave to apply for judicial review of the same decision of the Board, for which she subsequently at the hearing of her applications explained that as she had not heard any progress about her case since the filing of her first leave application in 2020, she was advised by her immigration officer during one of her reports on her recognizance in 2024 to file another application if she was worried in case something might have happened to her first application, which was in my view understandable in the circumstances and given the long lapse of time, and without further complicating the matter I therefore directed that her 2 applications be consolidated for hearing and decision.

12.However, similarly the Applicant did not put forward any proper grounds in this second application either in the Form or supporting affirmation for her intended challenge, nor was she able to do so at the consolidated hearing of her applications. 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 her intended challenge of the Board’s decision.

13.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.

14.In the Applicant’s case, the Board rejected her claim essentially on its adverse finding on her credibility for the thorough and detailed analysis and reasoning set out in its decision with the benefit of hearing her in her oral evidence and her answers to questions raised of her claim, and in the absence of any error of law 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 to challenge the finding of the Board.

15.Furthermore, the fact is that it has also been established by the Director in his decision that the risk of harm in the Applicant’s claim even if real is a localized one and that it is not unreasonable or unsafe for her to relocate to other part of Tanzania, a decision also agreed and confirmed by the Board, there is simply no justification to afford her 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 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 both her applications.

Dated the 23^rd day of September 2025

(Chung Lai Fan, Christine)
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 23 September 2025 Masura Agnes Richard 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 23 September 2025 Torture Claims Appeal Board Putative Respondent’s ref. no.: USM 15664/19/3/29/TA73 Director of Immigration Putative Interested Party’s ref. no.: QA T/C 5200/18 (Formerly RBCZ 10934/18) Department of Justice, Senior Assistant Law Officer (Civil Law) (Civil Litigation Unit 2)