1505506 (Refugee)

This matter concerned an application for a protection visa by two applicants, a principal applicant and a secondary applicant who applied as a member of the principal applicant's family unit. The applicants, who are citizens of Malaysia, claimed they left their home country due to a family dispute arising from their "love marriage." Specifically, the principal applicant alleged that his father-in-law attacked him after their marriage was registered and threatened to kill him if he remained with his wife. The applicants feared that upon return to Malaysia, they would face further attacks from the wife's father and an associated "gang," posing a real risk to their lives and their ability to live together. They asserted that no one in Malaysia could provide them with protection. The case was heard by Paul Windsor, a Member of the Tribunal.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether the applicants met the criteria for the grant of a protection visa under section 36(2)(aa) of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), which pertains to complementary protection. This required the Tribunal to determine if there were substantial grounds for believing that, as a necessary and foreseeable consequence of the applicants' removal from Australia to Malaysia, they would suffer significant harm. The Tribunal was also mandated to consider relevant policy guidelines from the Department of Immigration and country information assessments from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, as per Ministerial Direction No. 56.

The Tribunal's reasoning focused on the complementary protection criterion. It considered the applicants' claims of threats and violence from the wife's father and his associates, supported by statutory declarations, police reports, and hospital admission forms. The Tribunal was satisfied that these circumstances constituted substantial grounds for believing that the applicants would suffer significant harm if returned to Malaysia. Consequently, the Tribunal found that the applicants satisfied the criterion set out in section 36(2)(aa) of the Migration Act.

The Tribunal remitted the matter for reconsideration with the direction that the applicants satisfy section 36(2)(aa) of the Migration Act.